Tweet Of The Day

Self-described “Cleveland dad and geek” Chris Andrikanich found himself internet famous late yesterday after Google announced that its new parent company is called Alphabet, which happens to be his Twitter handle. It’s against Twitter’s rules to sell screen names, but that hasn’t stopped strangers from telling Andrikanich to hold out for a million dollars. The Washington Post has more about the naming of Alphabet:

Clearly, a lot of thought went into selecting the name — as Page explains, it’s a reference to human language and the innovation it represents. But picking a catchy moniker is just the beginning of a much more complicated process. As with any rebranding these days, firms also have to make sure they’ve lined up all the right Web domains, social media handles and so on. You wouldn’t want your customers to wind up at some other company’s site, would you? This is what makes Alphabet’s choice of URL so interesting. They picked abc.xyz — a clever play on letters. You can’t help but wonder, though: Did the company make any effort to secure Alphabet.com, which might be the more natural URL that an average person might guess is related to Alphabet the firm? Google declined to answer, but a quick records search reveals that the current owner of Alphabet.com is none other than BMW, the auto-maker. This suggests that if Google had tried to secure Alphabet.com, they would’ve been bidding against another gigantic multinational corporation for the rights — not some small-time Internet user in Ohio. And that would’ve meant potentially spending a lot more money for a Web site.

RELATED: Many years ago I pondered buying JMG.com, which was available at the time. But I waffled for a day too long and the URL was picked up a media company.