You can kinda fudge it though. Like, I don't think too many people are going to fork out the money to buy and operate the .bestbuy TLD other than ... Best Buy. So if they wanted to have it just for internal stuff, they didn't really need to own the TLD.
What's even more perplexing is that they own bestbuy.com - which is IMO more desirable than any dot-bestbuy domain for public-facing stuff.
Dunno. It may be a defensive IP thing where it’s cheaper to spend $300k on the TLD than to litigate domain name versus TLD against someone who sets up cars.bestbuy and shoes.bestbuy and stuff.
Does Best Buy’s trademark for retail extend to all categories? Maybe? But consider that booking.com spent millions and took years to get the Supreme Court to decide that “booking.com” is trademarkable, where “booking” is not.
The more I think about that the more I think I’d make the same decision.
This makes sense; $200k is only what, a 0.01% of their weekly ad spend, and we're talking about it here so. . . That combined with defensive squatting, makes business sense to me, also probably fulfilled some VP's pet project
What's even more perplexing is that they own bestbuy.com - which is IMO more desirable than any dot-bestbuy domain for public-facing stuff.