UPDATE: June 16, 2011 Looks like I was wrong with my prediction of Engadget and AOL Tech Guru. Anyhow, you can’t be right all of the time. AOL has launched their AOL Tech Guru service at www.AOLTechGuru.com, where they are providing technical support. According to the site, AOL TechGuru offers remote technical support you can trust, anytime and anywhere, 24×7. Let our U.S. and Canada-based techs get your PC back on track today!” The following is the original blog post, where I speculated about the AOL Tech Guru domain name purchases:
Is AOL about to change the popular tech site Engadget into the AOL Tech Guru? AOL does not normally purchase a whole heck of a lot of domain names on a regular basis. In fact, from what I can tell, it’s been a while since AOL has purchased any new domain names. But, based on a few new domain names that AOL has picked up today, including AOLTechGuru.com, it might just be possible that AOL is about to make a move to establish a new AOL Tech Guru.
And there is an outside chance that Engadget would be the most likely target of this rebranding.
AOL has recently purchased the following domain names:
aoltechguru.biz
aoltechguru.com
aoltechguru.org
enghadget.com
Certainly, enghadget.com is what I would call a “defensive registration”, to secure a domain that is obviously a typo of the real Engadget.com. That just makes sense.
But what I find interesting here is the brand new registration of the AOL Tech Guru domain names. Certainly there will be a new AOL Tech Guru. Of course I don’t know whether or not Engadget or any of the other tech-type websites owned by AOL are going to be rebranded–or if this is going to be a completely new website. Right now, as of the time that I’m writing this, AOLTechGuru.com is not resolving anywhere–there doesn’t appear to be a website just yet.
Whatever the case is, rebranding or not, it looks like we are going to have a new AOL Tech Guru ‘in the house’.
UPDATE: AOL has purchased one more domain name, on June 9, 2011: they purchased aoltechguru.net.