MIcrosoft forgot to renew its registration on hotmail.co.uk. The domain was subsequently re-registered by another individual, who reportedly tried to give it back to Microsoft but was ignored.
Microsoft only became aware that it had lost control over the Hotmail domain when called by a reporter who broke the story, though records indicate the domain was up for renewal October 23.
Microsoft claim hotmail.co.uk only sent users to the wrong site for a short period of time, and that it has now put processes in place to ensure there is no recurrence of this event.
A similar incident occurred in December 1999, when Microsoft forgot to renew passport.com, the domain used by the Passport authentication service that underlies many Microsoft services, including Hotmail.
At that time, the Linux programmer who re-registered the Passport domain handed it back to Microsoft and was rewarded with a check for the princely sum of $500, which he then auctioned, raising $7,100 for charity.
This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.
