Taking a comical dig at Alphabet's official website ABC.XYZ, identical websites have been booked to redirect users to Google's rival Bing.
The choice of web addresses to mock Google's new parent company is what stirs humour. According to media reports, ABC.WTF and ABC.FAIL are redirecting users to Bing search.
Although the Redmond-based software company refused to own responsibility for the latest attack on Google, looking up the troll websites on Whois Entry reveals the IP location for the new domains is Microsoft.
Microsoft spokesperson issued a direct statement to several publications stating, "Microsoft did not buy this domain and is not involved in the redirect to bing.com," CNET reports.
But it may seem hard to digest.
After all, Microsoft was behind the 2013 Scroogled campaign that shed light on Google's unfair practices. The campaign was pulled down after CEO Satya Nadella took charge of the company, replacing Steve Ballmer.
Are we expected to believe that Microsoft has undergone a change of heart over the past year? Or is it just enjoying the show without owning responsibility?
But what's a troll without Twitter users participating in it? Take a look at some funny tweets in response to Alphabet below:
they're renaming themselves to alphabet (alpha beta) cause none of their products ever leave beta.
— Gar (@wraithgar) August 10, 2015
Bing should rename itself ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. — Eli Langer (@EliLanger) August 10, 2015
Microsoft will become Numbers and the URL they will use is http://t.co/E3xtsmSaBR... oh crap.
— Adrian Vender (@adrianvender) August 10, 2015
Yo @google, how do we become the D in Alphabet? http://t.co/ICxV6SNTO0 — Digg (@digg) August 10, 2015
now we know the one person who bought an .xyz address... https://t.co/F51sqk1ZJd
— Frederic Lardinois (@fredericl) August 10, 2015
Google: "Don't be evil" Alphabet: "Evil is just one of our businesses" — Tim Carmody (@tcarmody) August 10, 2015
I can't wait for Alphabet+
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 10, 2015
Google changes in emoji Alphabet = Google Calico Fiber Ventures Nest x Google = Search YouTube Android Maps Ads — Addy Osmani (@addyosmani) August 10, 2015
"alphabet it" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "google it" does
— @samsheffer (@samsheffer) August 10, 2015