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Utube.com, a Web site owned by a supplier of used tubes and pipes, has been swamped this week with visitors confusing it with online video service YouTube.
The site has been barely operational since Google said Monday that it will buy YouTube for $1.65 billion.
"I'm at a point now, all I want to do is to make the site work," Ralph Girkins, owner of the site belonging to Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, said Thursday.
"Today, it's been up the longest it's been up for a week--an hour and a half," said Ohio-based Girkins.
Utube.com is the sixth most popular U.S. manufacturing Web site, ahead of Whirlpool, according to data provided by HitWise.
On Monday, Girkins told Reuters that an intermediary who said he was acting on behalf of YouTube had offered $1 million to buy the Internet address. Girkins said turned down the offer and was holding out for $2.5 million to $3 million.
A YouTube representative said it had not made an offer and had no plans to do so.
On Thursday, Girkins said he had received about 20 phone calls from people who offered to sell his site for him. He has not been in contact with Google or YouTube, he said.
Bad move there from youtube, branding "youtube" when utube.com was already existant. Although I think youtube is a snazzy domain, it's not optimal with brand spillage to utube.com being inevidable.
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utube.com - Creation Date: 26-oct-1996
Youtube.com - Creation Date: 15-feb-2005
All that brand spillage, from youtube over to utube. What a waste. I'm sure Google will dig deep to buy utube.com, so as to protect their investment.