A brief description of what happened: they forgot to pay their domain, they registrar displayed there ads instead of the Microchip website, then they paid (which should be about 12$) and the site got back online.
More details for those interested:
* On the 25/05/11, microchip.com expired, so the automated process of they registrar is to change the DNS description to a standard DNS description for expired domains, so that microchip.com displayed a register.com website stuffed with ads.
* DNS is a web by itself, and there is propagation delay, most ISPs and companies have there own DNS servers, which is refreshed once in a while, so at that point, some people could access the real microchip.com website, and some other couldn't.
* At some point, they realized that their website was sinking, and they leased the domain for another year (good thinking ! Why wasn't that done before ... dunno, usually registrar send you dozen of warnings before the expiration date).
* register.com DNS got immediately updated with the correct description, however, with the propagation delay, the website was still down for some people
Funny facts:
* E-mails sent at microchip.com were partly not received on the days of 25/26 May at Microchip Tech, since the MX (Mail eXchange) server was no longer registred
*
Microchip Technology Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:MCHP) dropped a bit at the NASDAQ opening on the 26
* They probably got charged a
**broken link removed**
Following the expiration of a domain registration we may have the ability to reinstate the account so that you can renew your expired domain before it has become generally available to the public. There are no guarantees that we will be able to reinstate a domain after its expiration. If you would like an expired domain registration to be reinstated, you will be charged our then-current reinstatement fee in addition to the renewal fees for your domain registration.