Weeks after restructuring its business under a new name, Google – now a subdivision of parent company Alphabet – has bought the self-evidently relevant domain name Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com.
The web address was first registered – by somebody else – in 1999. It is not known how much the search giant has now paid to acquire it, says CNBC, nor is it clear what Google will do with it: as of this afternoon, the page is blank.
The unwieldy URL gives CNBC, and other news sites, the chance to poke fun at Alphabet's seemingly limitless ambition, opining that: "Google has bought the alphabet. Not literally, of course."
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Announcing its new company structure in August, the firm revealed that Alphabet's domain name was unconventional: abc.xyz. A spokesman yesterday joked: "We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we're just being thorough."
CNBC points out that Google owns 18,095 other domain names, according to the internet register Whois. These include misspellings like Googl.com and Gogle.com.
The cautious firm even owns both GoogleSucks.com and GoogleBlows.com. F***Google.com belongs to somebody else, however.
And there is another address the firm may regret not owning: Alphabet.com. That domain belongs to BMW and, according to the New York Times, the German car manufacturer has no plans to sell.
Last week, Sky News reported that a former Google employee, Sanmay Ved, managed to buy Google.com for $12, using the firm's own domain name sale service.
Ved said he was shocked when the transaction went through and his card was charged – but Google emailed him minutes later to say the transaction had been cancelled.
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