Alphabet Runs Into The Letters BMW
Have you wondered why Google’s new parent company, Alphabet, chose the rather unusual domain name abc.xyz for their website? Maybe it’s because alphabet.com was already taken, and it’s owned by BMW.
The German manufacturer’s fleet service provider is called Alphabet, and last year, their fleet portfolio grew to more than 555,000 contracts. In other words, business is good. BMW owns the Alphabet name trademark and the .com domain, and it’s likely they won’t hand it over to Google. Or Alphabet. I mean Google’s Alphabet, not BMW’s.
According to an article published by the New York Times, a BMW spokesperson in Munich said that they were never contacted by Google in regards to the Alphabet.com domain name, and they have no plans to sell it, either. As for the trademark, the two companies are running different businesses, so it shouldn’t be a problem. But Google is working on a self-driving car, so maybe there is a problem. We’ll see.
On the other hand, since the announcement of the creation of Alphabet – Google’s holding company – BMW’s fleet service website has been down due to the massive increase in traffic. Google may not have asked to purchase the domain name, but maybe BMW will end up selling it to them in despair. Everybody has a price.