Domain Frenzy

The domain name game is still a very viable money maker according to the article by CNNMoney. With last year's sale of Business.com for US$345 million from the seller eCompanies who originally paid US$7.5 million for the domain name in 1999 from a seller who bought the domain name for US$150,000, it would appear that domain name game is still going strong.

According to the CNNMoney article:

Domain names often sell for thousands of dollars into the many millions. In 2006, diamond.com sold for $7.5 million while sex.com sold for $12.5 million. Casino.com sold for $5.5 million in 2003. Computer.com sold for $2.1 million last year. In all, 33 sites have sold for $1 million or more, according to research firm Zetetic.

There are also companies which buy and sell domain names and offer various services for domain name buyers. Companies such as Demand Media and Oversee.net have made hefty profits from the domain name business. The article goes into depth to describe the type of business and the monetary figures of the companies' investment and profits.

Source [CNNMoney]

Businessweek has a great article "Finding Your Dream Domain Name" on the process of choosing a domain name for your business.

Source [Businessweek]

EURid, the Belgium-based registry for .eu domain names, suspended 10,000 domain names which were registered to a Chinese woman whom it accuses of cybersquatting. In response, the woman has filed a lawsuit against EURid in the Court of First Instance in Brussels, Belgium.

According to the Register article:

EURid, the Belgium-based registry for .eu domain names, has blocked the names and has the right to strip the woman, Zheng Qingyin, of the names. EURid legal manager, Herman Sobrie, told OUT-LAW, though, that the organisation wanted to have a court strip Qingyin of the addresses. He said that case would take about a year.

Also, according to Sobrie, the result of the case brought by Zheng Qingyin should be known in about a month.
Although EURid received many complaints regarding the domain names registered by the Chinese woman, EURid does not have the authority to bring legal action against alleged cybersquatters. Only those claiming the domain name can bring legal action against a domain name owner.
Therefore, EURid has brought action against the Chinese woman based on her place of residence. It seems that the .eu domain name extension can only be registered by those based in the European Union.
Sobrie goes onto state that:

"We started asking for more information about her domicile. She said she was domiciled in London. At first we took that for granted, but we had indications that that was probably not true. We have serious doubts about the eligibility of that lady and at a certain point we thought we had enough reason to say that she wasn't eligible. Under the circumstances we preferred to sue in a Belgian court and have the names revoked by the court rather than do it ourselves and be sued.
When we screen our data bank we see that some people have an amazing amount of names. Nobody needs 10,000 names. We had a lot of complaints from people complaining to us that they were contacted or they contacted the holder, who said 'make an offer and we'll sell it'. We know the prices were between €500 and €1500."

Source [The Register]

This past week, the search engine website Business.com was purchased by the R.H. Donnelley Corp., a publisher of Yellow Pages phone directories for $345 million. Business.com was sold in an auction format with such bidders as IAC, New York Times, Dow Jones, and News Corp.
The domain name business.com was originally purchased in a widely publicized sale from Marc Ostrofsky by Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton for US$7.5 million in 1999.

According to the L.A. Times article:

Business.com has 100 employees and will have revenue of $50 million this year, R.H. Donnelley said. The search engine serves more than 6,000 business-to-business advertisers.

Source [L.A. Times]

According to an announcement made by Moniker.com, the domain name Porn.com was sold for US$9.5 million to Detroit-based MXN Ltd., an Internet media and investment business. MXN is affiliated with Downloadpass.com, an adult movie download site and Pimproll.com, an adult Web site promotion company.
According to the founder and CEO of Moniker.com:

the $9.5 million price tag for Porn.com is the second largest ever paid for a domain name, coming in second to the $12 million paid for Sex.com in 2005 in a private sale. Cahn said the price for Porn.com is the largest ever for an all-cash transaction.

The domain name Porn.com was offered for sale in March 2007 at the Traffic West Domain Name Auction in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, the domain name at the time did not reach the reserve price even though the high bid at the time reached US$7 million.



Source [Computer World Malaysia]

The one-time online retailer of jewelry and luxury goods Odimo (based in Sunrise, Florida), has sold the domain name Ashford.com for $400,000 to the private holding company Luxi Group of New York.
According to the article by the Miami Herald:

The deal follows Odimo's sales last year of the domain names Diamond.com and WorldofWatches.com in separate transactions valued at almost $10 million.

Odimo is now a nonoperating publicly traded shell company that's looking for potential merger or acquisition candidates. It has $74 million in loss carryforwards, which a business -- for tax purposes -- could apply to future profits.

Source [Miami Herald]

There is an interesting article by the Financial Times regarding cybersquatters and cybersquatting of domain names.

Source [Financial Times]

Moniker.com completed their live auction of domain names at T.R.A.F.F.I.C West in The Venetian Resort, Hotel and Casino Las Vegas. The results of the domain name auction can be viewed:

Moniker.com Domain Name Auction Results

The domain name registrar Moniker.com has announced that on Wednesday, March 7 at 2:30 pm PST, Moniker.com will auction off domain names Live at T.R.A.F.F.I.C West to be held at The Venetian Resort, Hotel and Casino. The domain names to be auctioned off Live will include among others: FreshFood.com, Privacy.com, Ethanol.com, Reunite.com, Greeting.com, Sopranos.com, Minnesota.org, MoviePreviews.com, OnlineVideos.com

Moniker will also be holding a silent auction for thousands of other domain names which will run online from March 6 through March 14, 2007.
According to the front page of the Moniker.com website, domain names can be submitted for inclusion in the next auction!

Moniker Brings Multi-Million Dollar Domain Name Auction Back to Las Vegas at T.R.A.F.F.I.C West

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided a couple of weeks ago to eliminate the domain name suffix ".um" The domain name suffix was previously earmarked for U.S. "minor outlying islands." However, the University of Southern California (USC), who had been in charge of ".um", decided that they did not want to handle the administration of ".um" since no one had been using ".um" in the first place.
Last month, ICANN began soliciting suggestions from the public in deciding which domain name suffix to remove. ".um" came out as the leading candidate.

So the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided unanimously last week to eliminate it entirely, bringing the list of domains to 264.

There are still separate domains for larger U.S. territories, including ".gu" for Guam and ".vi" for the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Internet has seen new domain names such as ".eu" for Europe and ".travel" for the travel industry in recent years, and ICANN is reviewing a proposal to create an online red-light district under ".xxx."

Furthermore,

Last month, it began accepting public comments on how best to pare the list by revoking outdated suffixes, primarily assigned to countries that no longer exist.

The Soviet Union's ".su" is the leading candidate for deletion; that'll be harder to strike than ".um" -- a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google search produced more than 3 million ".su" sites.

Source [Linux Insider]

Inside South Bay has a great article regarding the challenges in getting the right domain name to fit one's business or personal needs.

Source [Inside South Bay]

The domain name business is the land grab of the 21st Century. There's big money to be made in the buying and selling of domain names. That's according to James Altucher, managing partner at Formula Capital, an alternative asset management firm that runs several quantitative-based hedge funds as well as a fund of hedge funds.
Altucher

believes there's big money in domain names and he's watching companies which are stockpiling them. Among his favorites are VeriSign (VRSN), the monopoly which issues all .com and .net domain names. After all, "mortage.com" sold for $242,000 last year - misspelling and all. Altucher calls this "the land grab of the 21st century."

Altucher also

likes Marchex (MCHX), which owns some 200,000 addresses including domains for every zip code in the country. Is there money to be had? Altucher says a hedge fund manager he knows has been buying coming names for 10 years, and has already turned down $3 million for one of them.

Source [SeekingAlpha]

The domain name merlin.net was recently sold for US$30,000 at the domain name listing website Sedo.com. While the domain names enterprisemobile.com and drag.com were recently sold for US$34,000 each at the domain name listiong website Afternic.com.

The December 26, 2006 earthquakes off Taiwan severed undersea cables and disabled millions of users from accessing the internet. As a result, Chinese internet users were unable to renew their domain names nor reregister the domain names after their expiry.

The domain names -- or Web site addresses -- vanished after Chinese users were unable to update them or failed to re-register them on their expiry, the official Xinhua news service said, citing China International Network Information Center.

However,

Domain name servers were not responsible for lost domain names if holders did not re-register in time, Xinhua quoted a center insider as saying, since the loss was an "act of God."
But domain name servers may compensate individuals and companies under a scheme yet to be finalized, Xinhua added.

The lesson learned here may be that domain names should be renewed in advance of the expiry date and not at the last moment since there may be unanticipated occurrences.
Source [Reuters]

The Irish discount airline Ryanair Holdings PLC has lost its battle against a former disgruntled customer who registered the domain name ryanaircampaign.org. Michael Coulston of London, the former disgruntled customer, had used the domain name to criticise Ryanair's business practices.

The Irish carrier complained to the World Intellectual Property Organization that the domain name infringed on its trademarks and should therefore be transferred into Ryanair's possession.
But a WIPO panel said there was no evidence that Coulston, who runs a private online campaign aimed at informing Ryanair customers of ways in which they can complain to the company about its service, was using the domain name in bad faith.

In another previous domain name dispute with Coulston, Ryanair had been successful in wrestling the domain name ryanair.org.uk by lodging a complaint with Nominet UK (an organization responsible for Web domains ending in the .UK suffix).

Source [Business Week]