In an interesting twist to all of the new things Microsoft is working on they are now becoming an ICANN accredited registrar.
You can see them now on the ICANN list – It is really long so you might need to use your browsers search feature to find it down the list.
This means that they can register domains in the .com, .net, .org, .info, .name, and .info top level domains. It still remains to be seen how they will integrate this into their new product offerings, but we have seen some indication of their moves with their P2P service built into Vista. And the free domain name registration that they offer to Office Live users.
Microsoft said in a statement on Tuesday that the accreditation “will be helpful and educational for us as policies evolve and we introduce new and improved Internet-based services to our customers.”
“Becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar is just one of many ways we can improve our customers’ online and search experience,” the statement said.
On the same note, Google is a domain name registrar. It seems they use this as a means to determine when domain names have changed hands, and adjust search rankings. It is possible Microsoft is using it for the same reason.