Nissan relaunched their global brand Datsun in India with sales starting yesterday for the Datsun Go cars - without the Datsun.IN domain hosting their website, instead for months now Nissan Global sites have been pointing to Datsun.co.in - meanwhile Datsun.in is not parked for ads nor is there a pending INDRP! Checkout the whois without fail on datsun.in!!!!!!!
Strange: Ford India owns Ford.in since 2005 but has never ever used it to advertise or promote India centric products - instead prefers to use india.ford.com - that NEEDS to change! it does not even redirect!
Wow - the list just goes on...we could stick to the auto industry theme - Just saw a new ad for Renault bestseller the DUSTER use the .co.in extension (Renault - OVERVIEW) and looked up only to find another squatting situation with RENAULT.IN
Expedia seems to be back with a India focus after a hiatus - they have been heavily advertising on TV using expedia.co.in during the World Cup T20 Cricket these past few weeks.... despite owning .in domain since 2005 - which redirects to Expedia.co.in on use.
Funny, even Expedia.com does not redirect to Expedia.co.in for India users - still presents the US version with fares and locations relevant to US users - that is truely poor web traffic utilization...forget all that TV and Print blitzkreig!
Another example - Yakult the famous probiotic drink from the house of Danone - explicitly markets using the co.in extension versus using the .in secured during trademark period "sunnrise" in 2005...terrible! - they have just launched the product in local supermarkets in India.
VIP the famous luggage maker in India has a range called - Skybags - it does not own the .IN - sadly it is just been "squatted" on recently - Mar 31st 2014 by a Chinese "firm"
Skybags is advertising the co.in extension on some exciting new TV ads! "Back is the new front" Backpack range!
These are good news for me, I own many good .co.in domains .
Even google.in still redirects to google.co.in (as I posted recently on this forum in another thread), I think this fact add value to .co.in TLD considering that google.co.in is the first website in India and used from more than 95% of indian people.
Groupon had a half page ad in local papers promoting SRKs new movie HNY using the .CO.IN version - dug deeper to find out that they do not own .IN - no wonder!