[julian_sark]

Used to work for a software company in 2008 or some such. Back when IBM acquired the company, two remarkable things happened:

One, I heard Microsoft's Ballmer shout through a conference phone (MS had wanted to acquire it, too, but IBM prevailed).

Second, and within context here, I quickly excused myself from the all-hands and discovered that IBM had failed to get the ibm-whatever.com (or was it ibmwhatever.com? not sure) domain.

So I registered it. The next year, I would get loads of miss-guided and personal mail. I used to joke that I was now much better informed about product road-maps than when I was employed there.

My intention with the domain was to hand it over to IBM anyway, for a shirt and some pens or some such token. However, I was informed that much like the US government with terrorists, IBM does not negotiate, and would likely send me the lawyers instead of a shirt. So I caved to the suspected chilling effects proactively, and let the domain expire after a year.