I would bet that ‘stealth acquisitions of domain names’ means sitting around waiting until domain name ownership expires so that you can get them at registration price (what, $15?) and don’t have to pay their market price (up to thousands of dollars). I once lost a really good domain name just like that, whole site lost, years of work, my own fault, but what a bunch of b*****s. So I expect these people were offering you the possibility of acquiring language.com or polyglot.tv or whatever.

Earlier this year, Forbes ran a tournament to determine the most-hated corporate jargon. “Vertical” made it in there.

As for what it actually means, I believe it’s a mutant offspring of “vertical integration” or “vertical monopoly”– having a piece of a whole process from beginning to end.

Oh, apparently it is as bad in English as it is in Dutch. I guess it is a global corporate thing then to come up with (let me use the literal translation of a Dutch expression here, I guess you’ll get the idea) “toe-curling” synonyms in a vain attempt to be both original (which they’re not) and funny (which, erm, they’re not).

Regarding the expressions in this topic, I can only guess at the meaning of “stealth acquisitions” because of the addition of “of domain names”. In Dutch there’s something called “domeinkapers” (“domain hijackers”): people who register domains they think could be worth selling.