8 Successful Companies Who Changed Domain Names


#4 NBCnews.com

NBCNews.com was formerly known as MSNBC.com, is a news website owned and operated by NBCUniversal as the online arm of NBC News. Along with original and wire reporting, it features content from the cable television news channel MSNBC, NBC shows such as Today, NBC Nightly News and Dateline NBC, and partners such as The New York Times. The site was founded in 1996 as a 50-50 venture between NBCUniversal and Microsoft along with the cable news network MSNBC.

Call it branding confusion, advertising revenue or the end of a relationship between Microsoft and NBC, in July 2012, NBC was prompted to change its domain name from "MSNBC.com" to "NBCNews.com," overnight. For now, MSNBC.com redirects users to the NBCNews.com page, but some time this year MSNBC.com will become autonomous, representing the cable channel and its shows.

#3 Google

The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University. Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California with the domain name as"google.stanford.edu." Later they registered "google.com" in September 1997 and officially launched a year later.