Dive Brief:

• Major brands are buying up .sucks domain names in the early registration opened up by Vox Populi on March 30 in an effort to protect their image. A scrolling ticker of purchased domains can be seen at NIC.sucks. 
• Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Facebook are among the brands shelling out the $2,500 annual fee for the registered domains. The initial twilight period allows for only trademarked brands to bid on the domains. 
• Microsoft—which has purchased outlook.sucks, windows.sucks, and msn.sucks, among others—confirmed that it has no plans to utilize the domains and that it is only trying to protect the brands. 

Dive Insight:

There has a been a lively debate about whether or not the .sucks domain should even be in existence, as many believe it's purely a way for Vox Populi to extort money from brands looking to protect their image. Regardless of the debate, .sucks is here to stay, and now brands have to decide whether it's worth it to shell out the cash to stop others from creating negative .sucks pages.