After 12 years of mis-management it is clear to me that Microsoft has no clue what to do with this domain. I will help them solve this problem - and I won’t profit from it at all.

Why does Microsoft own gps.com?

Back in 1997 I was an intern at a company in Fargo, North Dakota - Great Plains Software. GPS. We owned gps.com. Makes sense.

It looked like this:

http://web.archive.org/web/19971211130548/http://www.gps.com/

Fast forward a few years and we get bought by Microsoft.

For years gps.com was redirected to our business solutions product which was still going by the name Great Plains. Made sense.

Then one day in 2005 I noticed that the 302 redirect was broken and gps.com didn’t go anywhere. I brought this to the attention of someone on the Streets and Trips team. They sold a product with a GPS in it. The company owned gps.com. No-brainer, right?

Eventually gps.com did a 302 redirect to Streets and Trips.

Fast forward to 2013 and it seems like they forgot about it again. It goes nowhere. Not even a bad redirect.

Just. Gone.

What they could do…

So, Microsoft … here are a few ideas to make use of this domain name.

  1. Point it back to Streets and Trips
  2. Point it to Bing Maps
  3. Point it to the Windows Phone

I don’t want you to do any of those.

Give it to me instead

Here’s the plan:

  1. I’ll setup a 501(c) non-profit
  2. You transfer gps.com to it
  3. The non-profit will sell the domain in auction format
  4. The proceeds (minus the actual costs of setting up the non-profit - nothing for me) will be donated to the Gates Foundation

I won’t benefit from this (in fact, it will require I put out some money ahead of time to setup the non-profit)

You won’t benefit from this.

Someone who actually wants to use the domain name will.

Thousands of people will benefit from what the Gates Foundation can do.

Let’s do this.