Universal Prank - Someone Registers AppleUniversal.com In Apple's Name

by , 2:30 PM EDT, April 16th, 2003

What is in a domain name? Ask the folks at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, CA. The company at that address, Apple Computer, has added a new name to its fleet of domains, AppleUniversal.com. This was noticed by the folks at TheInquirer, to give credit where credit is due, but perhaps no credit is due after all. Digging in to the domain name, it would appear that it was registered as a joke by a third party, and only made to look like Apple had done so.

If you do a whois search using Network Solutions' whois tool, you will find the following information associated with AppleUniversal.com:

Domain Name: APPLEUNIVERSAL.COM
Registrar: BULKREGISTER.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.bulkregister.com
Referral URL: http://www.bulkregister.com
Name Server: NSERVER2.APPLE.COM
Name Server: NSERVER.APPLE.COM
Status: ACTIVE
Updated Date: 11-apr-2003
Creation Date: 11-apr-2003
Expiration Date: 11-apr-2004

AppleUniversal, according to Network Solutions, was registered on 4/11/2003, the same day the LA Times broke a story that Apple was in talks with Vivendi International about acquiring Universal Music. According to the Times, and since confirmed by several mainstream news outlets, Apple is in talks to buy Universal Music for between US$5 and US$6 billion, something about which Apple has not commented.

If Apple were to register the name AppleUniversal.com, it would give a lot of credence to the story. After all, there are many other domain names owned by Apple that are not associated with any products or technologies currently offered by the company. For instance, iSchool.com points to Apple's site, though Apple is not currently offering an iSchool product. More intriguingly, iPhone.org also points to Apple's site, though iPhone.com is owned by GoDaddy, and points to a Vonage Web site.

In this case, if we go digging deeper, we can find out the truth. Noting that the "master" WHOIS server for this domain is whois.bulkregister.com, we found the following information attached to the domain (note that the first four lines are supposed to be for company information):

Hahahah!!! Tricked You!!!
April Fools
Tricked You!, HA HA HA HAHAHA
US

Domain Name: APPLEUNIVERSAL.COM

Administrative Contact
NOC Apple: Apple-NOC@APPLE.COM
Apple Computer, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
US
Phone 4089961010
Fax
Technical Contact
NOC Apple: Apple-NOC@APPLE.COM
Apple Computer, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
US
Phone 4089961010
Fax

Record updated date: 2003-04-11 17:26:29
Record created date: 2003-04-11
Record expires on date: 2004-04-11
Database last updated on: 2003-04-16 08:57:28 EST

Domain servers in listed order

NSERVER.APPLE.COM 17.254.0.50
NSERVER2.APPLE.COM 17.254.0.59

Anyone can point a domain to anyone else when they register it, as appears to be the case here, so if you see people getting excited about AppleUniversal.com, point them to this story.

The Mac Observer Spin:

It's a good prank, if a bit late for April Fool's. Who knows, maybe Apple will want the domain. It's theirs now, after all.

Apple