It appears that Google will be heading into the wireless business and even as early as January 2010. The phone which is made by HTC and what others have said is the HTC Passion version, Google is calling the phone Nexus One.

Images of the new phone are starting to surface after Google is "dogfooding" the product to some Google employees to test drive it and the images of the phone do not reveal any HTC branding on the phone.

Google, like many companies often fail to own the exact match domain name of the product or service for whatever reason at launch time. For smaller companies, this likely is an oversight or lack of funding. Google doesn’t have either of those problems. Well, the product isn’t officially launched yet but word is getting out about it and Google doesn’t own the domain name NexusOne.com!

NexusOne.com was actually first registered in 1998 according to whois history records and is currently owned by a Peter Villanueva of Portland, Oregon. The first whois record is 8-13-2001, which also shows Peter as the owner of the domain name. Currently, the domain name only resolves to a blank white page.

Searches are already clearly starting to pour in on search engines, including Google which shows popular searches as you type in the search box on Google.

Nexus One Google Searches

So is it a big deal not to own the exact match domain name of your company / service / product? YES! For one, it simply makes sense to own it and makes advertising easier and looks much more professional. It allows for customers to easily find you and lastly, when people search for you at search engines, it will help you rank higher for the exact match term while building trust in your customer seeing the exact domain name matching the product / service / company.

Now Google has an advantage over the majority! They own the most popular search engine in the world with a 72% stake in all search! They can clearly use Adwords and a category on there main domain name like google.com/nexusone which should and will help them provide the data searches are looking for at the top! There is a thing called Direct Navigation that they will have a lot more trouble with, without owning the domain!

So does Google really need to own the domain name NexusOne.com if that is the name of the phone they may or may not come out with? Technically, no they do not but they really should, even though they hold great power to display their content near the top.

Owning the exact match domain name is only a small piece of the puzzle, but for many companies that are not the size of Google, it’s an important piece of the puzzle. Google can work around it but why! They really should of purchased the domain name by now if that is the name they plan on using!