Automated Weather Source didn't see this cloud coming: Amazon snatches up AWS.com

Amazon has got round to buying itself the domain AWS.com, 12 years after the cloudy behemoth as we know it today went live.

As spotted by the Domain Name Wire website, WHOIS records reveal that AWS.com no longer resolves to its previous owners, AWS Convergence Technologies Inc.

At the time of writing, the domain resolves to the website of Earth Networks, which runs a weather app service called Automated Weather Source – AWS, geddit?

Amazon Web Services, the public cloud that has eaten the rest of the world's lunch, is currently hosted on aws.amazon.com. ICANN's Whois records show that on 12 September the domain was acquired by Amazon Technologies Inc. It was first registered in 1995.

Given the long history of AWS.com and its obvious attractiveness to AWS the bit-barn merchants, we asked Earth Networks whether Amazon had made them an offer that was too good to refuse. So far we haven't heard back from them – or, for that matter, from Amazon's UK tentacle.

The $1tn e-tailer started out flogging books and, in the 24 years since it booted up its first server, now offers everything from cloud services to bricks-and-mortar retail. ®