What's in a Tanker Website Name?

We have often wondered why the KC-30 team selected the rather long URL AmericasNewTanker for their website name, so one of our team did a bit of investigative work.

We had always assumed that they included the word New because they did not want to be sued for false advertising like when they called the very same tanker British in the UK. Anyway by adding New in the title, EADS can claim what they really meant was, surpise America's New Tanker isn't American. (Truth is the KC-30 is neither British nor American.)

Well further research now proves the above theory for the long URL is not true. Using the WHOIS database we found that the KC-30 team claimed the AmericasNewTanker.com domain name on 28 Jan 2008. A rival pro-Boeing site had already taken the shorter domain name AmericasTanker.com on 1 Oct 2007. So the KC-30 team was not worried about false advertising, but in fact were just late in securing their originally desired domain name.

In the end we think the KC-30 team lucked out by getting the URL AmericasNewTanker.com. They stay away from again being accused of false advertising and their site name can not be misread AmericaStanker.com. (Being mistaken for a Stanker is never a good thing according to the younger members here and the Urban dictonary.)

In AmericasTanker.com's defense though, they are on the right side of this issue and they have posted a pretty good video on the tanker issue recently: