The rising trend of domain squatting has made it difficult for large and small developers alike, who want to stake their claim in the vast, relatively new frontier called the World Wide Web. With the new car smell quickly being replaced with spam and identity fraud, shady organizations who take part in domain squatting often hope to achieve financial gain -- either through directly selling their nest egg domains to legitimate developers who require them, or intentionally diverting traffic to their own websites, which are often riddled with spyware, or worse.

While this under-handed tactic is slowly being dealt with on a legislative level, companies like Microsoft have taken matters into their own hands. Recently, the multi-billion dollar developer registered many variations of domains for potential upcoming titles in the acclaimed Halo series -- going as far as snatching up halo7.com through halo9.com, with .org and .net variants.

At first glance, it seems like a pretty bold move. Where did Halo 7 come from, and are Microsoft really planning that far ahead -- or are they covering their bases just in case? It can be argued that, as with their series of Windows operating systems, Microsoft is simply referring to the seventh chapter of the Halo saga. Earlier this year, however, Microsoft already snagged halo5.com, with halo6.com currently being parked by an individual not involved with the game series.

While Microsoft is certainly making sure there is a little corner of the Internet just for them, in the event that sequels like Halo 7 become a reality, it's interesting to see how far they might imagine the series going.

Ranters: keeping in mind the vast timeline created in the Halo universe, can you see the franchise launching into the double-digits? If so, what might these games be about?

Halo 4 is currently finishing development by 343 Industries, and drops November 6th for the Xbox 360.

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Source: Fusible