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Comment by Thorrez | Hacker News Reader

The story is not fully clear. It's possible he already tried to contact Microsoft and tried to sell it to them. They might have refused. But the idea of it going on an auction might pressure them into buying it.

Brian did contact Microsoft for comment, and their response doesn't mention that they want to buy it.

I consider it bad reporting that Brian doesn't mention whether Mike already contacted Microsoft or not.

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Thank you for your comment. Made me recall an important bit of reporting that I somehow omitted from the original story (now updated and rectified). O'Connor told me that several years back he got a $20k offer from Microsoft for the domain, but at the time he thought that was too low and didn't reflect the market value of the domain. He turned it down.

BTW, where do I go to buy it? Who's mediating the auction and how to I put my bid in?

Visiting http://corp.com/ takes me to a GoDaddy parking page and tells me that GoDaddy will happily convey my offer to the owner for $69.99 plus a 20% buyer broker fee. Is that the plan?

https://www.haven2.com/index.php/contact

https://www.haven2.com/index.php/domains

Hi Brian. Sorry to contact you through this, but could you please make your website responsive. It is hard reading your blogs from mobile phones. Thank you.

> I consider it bad reporting that Brian doesn't mention whether Mike already contacted Microsoft or not.

To my other comment you say 'contact Microsoft' as if there is a phone line which goes directly to the decision maker for this type of 'purchase'.

Brian could have said Mike tried or that Mike didn't know how to contact Microsoft. And Brian contacted Microsoft, so they could have offered the deal to them at that time, but the article doesn't mention it.

My BigCorp experiences make me picture events happening this way: somebody made Microsoft an offer, got told "let me ask my manager about that", and then the message got lost in twelve layers of management and/or just outright discarded by one of the human spam filters in one of those layers of management.

It's incredibly easy to find someone at a company like Microsoft who would know who the person is to make a decision like this. For example; I'd start on Linkedin or Twitter, searching for someone with a title that contains "Security", "Senior", "Distinguished", "Manager", etc. You'll find a dozen people. Send a few messages out that outline the situation. They're not the person who makes that decision, but they'll know where to direct it, and if its serious, they'll direct it.

No, there's no phone line. No one calls anyone anymore. Find an entry into their corporate graph, and let them resolve it internally. Or, get an article published on a high-profile blog outlining why they should buy it, and they'll be calling by Monday. Its not that hard.

From TFA: > Asked why he didn’t just give corp.com to Microsoft as an altruistic gesture, O’Connor said Microsoft actually offered to buy the domain several years back for $20,000.

As krebsonsecurity said, he edited the article to add that because of my comment.

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