Google Successully Acquired Goggle.com

Multinational technology company Google owns thousands of domain names in a portfolio consisting of ultra-premium names such as Zero.com and brand protection domains like Gooogle.com.

Google recently added another domain name to its portfolio that could fall into both the premium domain and brand protection brackets.

According to Whois data, Google is now the registrant of Goggle.com after the domain moved from Uniregistry to Google’s MarkMonitor account this week. Goggle.com was previously registered to Goggle.com, Inc. Previous versions of Goggle.com have been excluded from Archive.org’s Wayback Machine. The search giant has also secured domain names Goggle.net and Goggle.org from Goggle.com, Inc.

It comes over a decade after Goggle.com made headlines after Google filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum to secure Goggle.com, Goggle.net, and Goggle.org. The complaint, in which Zak Muskovitch represented the respondent, was dismissed after the panel gave a decision that stated, “The Panel declines jurisdiction over this Complaint and over Respondent’s related claim of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. The case is thus dismissed.”

The Goggle.com domain has a reportedly checkered past, with Malware Wiki sharing that “Goggle.com was considered by some to be a dangerous typosquatting site for Google.com made in 1998 (but turned into a malicious site in 2004).” The Goggle.com domain is still on some blocklists because of this. My broadband provider, BT, for example, blocks access to the page, warning of a potential scam. And when I emailed Andrew about this story, it landed on his spam folder.

It’s unknown whether Google purchased the domain names, but the trio of Goggle.com, Goggle.net, and Goggle.org were part of the 2022 Right of the Dot auction. According to Raymond Hackney on Twitter, the three domains sold as a package for $270,000, but there was reportedly a stipulation that another party could match the winning bid. That other party could have been Google.

With Goggle.com, Goggle.net, and Goggle.org under its ownership, Google has secured three key domains from a brand protection perspective. According to SimilarWeb, Goggle.com received 466,800 visitors in July 2022, a significant number of people that were likely trying to get to Google.com

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