Wednesday 12 August 2015 6:31 pm

Did Google forget to Google Alphabet? BMW owns Alphabet.com – and has no intention of selling

Looks like Google forgot to Google Alphabet before radically restructuring their whole company.

Google’s new parent company won’t be able to register alphabet.com, because it’s already owned by German carmaker BMW, who have a fleet of cars under the same name, and are unamused to say the least by Google’s surprise move.

The two giants are now locking horns over the name – and BMW spokesperson Micaela Sandstede said in an interview with the New York Times that the company is holding on tight to its domain:

We are not planning to sell the domain.

Instead, the German carmaker is looking into whether Google’s new name constitutes a trademark infringement. Ouch.

Alphabet’s quirky choice of website, abc.xyz, suddenly appears not so much clever play as a necessary concession to others who got there first.

And the website’s not the only thing that was already taken: Google had to announce its new holding company without either the obvious choice of website or Twitter account.

The Twitter account @alphabet was registered in 2007, by a man living in Ohio, who has got quite a bit more attention than he was expecting over the past couple of days.