Yeah, that new's site often times just republishes stuff. I think that article they republished was from back in 2005 when the original announcement was made.
Vint Cerf said Google became a registrar to know when domains were expired for search engine results purporses. That didn't work thanks to changes in expired domain markets:
http://domainnamewire.com/2006/07/1...t-foils-google/
