Microsoft apparently forgot to renew its domain registration for hotmail.co.uk. You can read the full story over at The Register, a british IT news site.
Some guy noticed that the domain was available and snatched it up out of the goodness of his heart before anyone else could. He’s already agreed to give it back to Microsoft. If I’m not mistaken, it would be illegal for him to sell it back. You would hope Microsoft will at least reimburse the guy for the cost of registering the domain.
The domain registrar said they followed procedure in making sure Microsoft was aware of the domain’s upcoming expiration. I guess someone really dropped the ball on that one.