The real history is a lot more colorful than that. In the first dot-com boom, Zapata was a natural gas and fish meal company that tried to take over Excite (a major portal at that time) by rebranding itself with the name Zap.com [1].

They got widespread mockery and bad press coverage for that, and no longer use the domain.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapata_Corporation