Microsoft now has the rights to Office.porn and Office.adult. Before you get the idea that Microsoft is a big fan of the adult novel featuring ‘Clippy’ the old Office assistant (sadly that’s actually a thing) know that this is strictly to protect their brand name.
It may seem confusing to register domains with names suggesting explicit content to protect the image of a company but Microsoft is likely purchasing these names to prevent people with bad intentions from having the rights to them.
Music star Taylor Swift has made similar moves and it’s likely that other companies and celebrities will as well. The reason these new domains are available is the expansion of the types of domains people can register thanks to a move by the non-profit Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Companies and celebrities have until June 1st to purchase url’s ending in ‘.sucks’, ‘.porn’, ‘.adult’ before the general public has the chance to grab them for themselves.
One of the ideas behind having such domains is to aid in internet filtering. Unfortunately a side effect of their existence is that ne’er-do-wells can combine them with the names of popular corporations or individuals for inappropriate sites.
