How often do you think companies register domains for defensive reasons? For example, the well-known manufacturers Hitachi registered 'Hitachi' in all the extensions available for Indian domains:

Hitachi.in
Hitachi.co.in (main website for Hitachi in India)
Hitachi.net.in
Hitachi.org.in
Hitachi.firm.in
Hitachi.gen.in (redirects to Hitachi.com)
Hitachi.ind.in

Except for Hitachi.co.in and redirecting Hitachi.gen.in, all the other domains do not resolve to an actual website. This suggests that the domains were registered for defensive reasons.

Also, it's interesting to note (although not surprising) that of all the Indian domains they registered, Hitachi choose to use .co.in as their main India website.

I think registering domains for defensive reasons was a smart move by Hitachi. With regard to Indian domains, do you think a lot of other companies are registering domains for defensive reasons as well?

Well there are more examples like this - for example Indiatimes.com - has registered
itimes.in
itimes.net.in
itimes.co.in and so on... (lost itimes.net to someone else - and I am not sure if they are following that up to recover that name) - itimes.us is still available go out and get it guys!!!

Also interesting to note is that they prefer Indiatimes.com over indiatimes.co.in (registered with them)
and also registered domains are
indiatimes.in
indiatimes.org.in
indiatimes.co.in

Cheers

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I think they are using indiatimes.com cos thats how they started..and the .IN's were registered later on I guess..

It's not just companies that register domains for defensive reasons; apparently government departments do this as well:

Queensland-the-dumb-state.com is owned by the Queensland premier's department (source: Government buys queensland-the-dumb-state.com domain). Strange they registered the hyphenated domain but not the unhyphenated domain, which was available at the time.

No wonder someone in Govt was smart enough to prove a point about being really dumb...

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