This story bothers me, but I'm struggling to put my finger on why.
It's a terrible user experience to expect to go to a car website but instead get a website for a dinky computer services shop in a small town in Virginia. There's maybe 1000 people who would use this website, it's just a glorified business card. Now I have to go search on Google to find what Nissan's actual website is.
On the other hand, Nissan is mega corp, and the internet is ideally a level playing field for all, not just those with deep pockets. It kind of feels like the computer shop is fighting the good fight against corporate hegemony.
But it's so incredibly damaging to Nissan's brand to have to local computer shop using the nissan.com domain. Nobody outside of this small town gives a crap about the shop. It's a damn waste of a domain name, it could see much more utility under Nisaan's (car maker) control. Nissan will never drop their case because of this, I could see them lobbying to change domain ownership laws to wrestle control away from this guy. In which case, give up the damn domain buddy, or else the lawmakers will put something on the books and we all lose.
That, and the internet has moved on from what it was in its formative years. It's truly at a global scale now. When I type in a global company's name into the address bar and add .com, I expect to see their home page. This theory holds true for every global brand. Toyota, BMW, Pepsi, Apple, Ikea, etc. etc. It thwarts the usefulness of domain names if I can't do this.
The narrative ends in 2008 with Nissan Motors attempting to "obtain a Federal Trademark Registration for computers and computer peripherals among other classes of goods and services" in an apparent attempt to create another line of attack. Nissan Motors applied in 2007 and were registered in 2013. Wikipedia says that Nissan Motors has dropped its claim on the Nissan.com domain name, and uses nissanusa.com instead.
It's a terrible user experience to expect to go to a car website but instead get a website for a dinky computer services shop in a small town in Virginia. There's maybe 1000 people who would use this website, it's just a glorified business card. Now I have to go search on Google to find what Nissan's actual website is.
On the other hand, Nissan is mega corp, and the internet is ideally a level playing field for all, not just those with deep pockets. It kind of feels like the computer shop is fighting the good fight against corporate hegemony.
But it's so incredibly damaging to Nissan's brand to have to local computer shop using the nissan.com domain. Nobody outside of this small town gives a crap about the shop. It's a damn waste of a domain name, it could see much more utility under Nisaan's (car maker) control. Nissan will never drop their case because of this, I could see them lobbying to change domain ownership laws to wrestle control away from this guy. In which case, give up the damn domain buddy, or else the lawmakers will put something on the books and we all lose.
That, and the internet has moved on from what it was in its formative years. It's truly at a global scale now. When I type in a global company's name into the address bar and add .com, I expect to see their home page. This theory holds true for every global brand. Toyota, BMW, Pepsi, Apple, Ikea, etc. etc. It thwarts the usefulness of domain names if I can't do this.