20000117

Canadian owned microsoft.com for a while

TORONTO: A Canadian had a taste of what it meant to be a media mogul after owning two prime pieces of Internet real estate for an hour, The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday.

Chris Gronski, 31, an e-business manager, was the proud owner of microsoft.com and yahoo.com after he discovered a small computer glitch on Friday at the Web site of Network Solutions Inc., the leading U.S. company registering dot-com Web site addresses.

The company said the glitch was an internal software problem, unrelated to the Y2K bug, and it lasted only an hour. But it was long enough for Gronski to register the names for $50 each on his credit card.

Gronski was on the Web site registering another address for business purposes when he decided to check if his own last name - gronski.com - was available, since it was not before. When Gronski found it up for grabs, he suspected something was wrong, the newspaper said.

He then searched for Microsoft and Yahoo. Both names were available so he registered them for himself. While he made the credit card payment, the company says Gronski never owned the names, even if it appeared that way.

But Gronski has "no illusions" of keeping the names. He did, however, make a printout of the screen that "confirms" his registration of microsoft.com and yahoo.com.

"I think I'll put it on my resume: Once owned microsoft.com for 35 seconds," he said.-Reuter