Fiorina: ‘You can’t buy every domain name’

Presidential candidates can’t scoop up every web address associated with their name, recently announced GOP candidate Carly Fiorina said Tuesday. 

Social media lit up Monday — the day she announced her presidential bid — after finding out that CarlyFiorina.org directed Internet users to a webpage bashing her record at Hewlett-Packard, instead of to her own presidential webpage. 

{mosads}”I’ve certainly read about it,” she said at TechCrunch Disrupt when asked whether she had seen the website. 

“You can’t buy every domain name,” she added. “You just can’t. Maybe we should have tried, but we didn’t. And so people are going to do what they are going to do. But hopefully people will go to carlyforpresident.com instead.”

The dot-org webpage includes tens of thousands of sad faces on it to signify “how many people she laid off at Hewlett-Packard.” It was later revealed that a union worker for the SEIU bought the domain and set up the site on his own. 

Fiorina on Tuesday again defended her record as the CEO of HP, where she was eventually fired in 2005 after what she described as a boardroom brawl. She said the company grew steadily during her tenure, even during a bust in the tech industry. 

“Business has numbers. It has results,” she said. “So people can say whatever they like, but the facts and numbers and results of my time at HP are crystal clear and they are as I described them.”

A number of presidential candidates have faced problems with outsiders scooping up domain names associated with them. For example, TedCruz.com com leads to a page supporting President Obama and comprehensive immigration reform.