It appears that someone has again associated at least fifty (probably more) domain names with microsoft.com, and given them humorous titles tending to disparage the mighty Redmond Leviathan.

A DNS lookup of "microsoft.com" at SamSpade.org yields a list of domains such as:

These actually refer to real sites: for example, MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.COM is simply another name added to the Whois database related to both Microsoft and a site called linuxisgod.com. When you do a DNS lookup on the humorous name, you get linuxisgod's registration information, and so on for skanky.net, insecure.org, terrorists.net, etc.

When you search for microsoft.com you're shown all the domains which contain that text in their names. This isn't a hack per se; no one is being redirected from the Microsoft Web site or anything like that, and the domains in question haven't actually been renamed. A search on their regular names still brings up the proper Whois information. But it is mildly amusing, we have to admit.

This happened once before, back in January, with strangely similar names being added. That event coincided with an actual DNS hack, and was for some time imagined to be part of it.

Reader Stefan Thierl reports that according to his information the names have been continuously humorous since January; we have the impression that it was resolved some months ago but has since been 'restored'.

We find it hard to imagine a company as obsessively image-conscious as Microsoft not taking steps to see it sorted out to their satisfaction. But if other readers can verify that they've seen this oddity throughout the intervening months, we'd like to hear from you.

We have a static page from SamSpade here if you wish to see for yourself. ®