A California company called Plantronics acquired a company called Polycom in a $2 billion deal announced last year. This morning, I saw a Google Alert about the company rebranding as Poly. The acquisition and rebrand was covered by eWeek. Smartly, the company acquired the matching Poly.com domain name in advance of the rebrand news.
In looking at the Whois record for Poly.com, I can see the domain name is registered with Whois privacy protection at Brandsight, a corporate domain name and brand management firm helmed by Phil Lodico, Matt Serlin, and Elisa Cooper. A Whois History tool search from DomainTools shows the domain name likely transferred to Brandsight this past February. I can see that Jamie Zoch also noticed when the domain name transferred and tweeted about it:
New corporate domain name provider, Brandsight appears to have acquired Poly(.)com from Mediagrif Interactive Technologies for a currently unknown client. The domain was redirecting to Polygon(.)net prior. #domain #brand
— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) February 22, 2019
The prior registrant of Poly.com is a company called Mediagrif Interactive Technologies. I reached out to Mediagrif and the media team at Poly to see if they are able to comment about the purchase price of the Poly.com domain name or any other relevant information about the domain name. Should I hear back from either of these parties with information about the domain name acquisition, I will share an update or possibly publish a subsequent article.
Poly.com is a short and sweet domain name, and it was smart to get the perfect domain name prior to the rebrand. Perhaps the rebrand was contingent upon acquiring the domain name.
Polycom and Plantronics both leaders in Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and Teleconference accessories. If your cubicle has a Plantronics device, it’s your job to answer the phones.
I went for another brand for a headset to use at home for Zoom conference stuff.
I use Plantronics headphones at work. Great product.