Google appears to be getting ready to launch a new watch with the name “Tacto” which means “Touch” in Spanish. Google had acquired WIMM Labs back in 2012 and they had owned the domain name TactoWatch.com at that time but Google gained control over the domain when it purchased WIMM Labs. Google has also revealed they own the category killer domain name SmartWatch.com and SmartWatch.net also moving yesterday which I covered here as well.
As of yesterday, October 15, 2014, the same day that Google announced the Nexus 9 tablet, the Nexus 6 smartphone and the Nexus Player (TV Player)… they pulled the covers secretly on the domain names TactoWatch.com and Tacto.com which both held generic MarkMonitor data in whois . Both domain names currently at the time of this story do not resolve but whois on both now display Google as the owners and DNS was set on both to Google.com.
It appears that Google acquired the domain Tacto.com about November 2012 and may have been owned by WIMM Labs as well, but the domain was under whois privacy at the time of the change.
The code name for this watch appears to have been “Gem” and appeared to have an expected launch date of late October 2014.
Update: I may have jumped the gun a little on this name.. I just discovered that Google has transferred in A LOT of watch names like Altos Watch, Fusion Watch, Pillar Watch so those names should also be considered. I do like the Tacto name best of the ones I just mentioned though! Clearly SmartWatch.com is going to come into play, but Google also needs to name the watch for branding reasons… and it could be a name not mentioned in this article as well.
Last time I checked the category killer “smartwatch.com” was owned by WIMM therefore now by Google. The domain “smartwatches.com” is owned by Smart Jewellers in Chicago.
I was working on that story when you posted your comment: https://dotweekly.com/google-acquires-smartwatch-com-smartwatch-net/ which I had noticed after working on the Tacto name.
WIMM was the owner of SmartWatch.com.