Harkening back to the Internet boom days when money flowed freely, the domain name 'sex.com' sold for a reported $14 million dollars. That name will probably pay for itself, but what really struck me was how this reminded me of another domain name that sold for big bucks.
Back in the day, a bank that I worked for decided to start an Internet division. Rather than leverage the banks own name recognition, the bank spent thousands to hire the finest marketing folks to do focus groups to find names that would make people feel comfortable and financially secure sending their hard earned cash through the Internet. The focus group finally found a name that made the bank's leadership giddy with delight and they moved to quickly begin buying letterhead, setting up marketing campaigns and all of the other things one does when they start a new company--but not an Internet company. When it came time to actually setup the website for the fledgling company...guess what...www.the-new-bank-name-here.com was already taken. Yes, they'd spent millions of dollars getting ready without doing a simple who-is to make sure the TLD was available.
Turns out that the small consulting company that had been using the TLD for years was based only an hours drive from the bank's headquarters, so up the highway went the bank's negotiators with a command to bring back the name 'at any price'--and that's what they did. It's unclear exactly how much was paid for the TLD, but it was in the neighborhood of the price just paid for sex.com.
The story would be crazy if it ended there, but even better, the new Internet bank was made the 'victim' of a merger and was closed and gone before it really got started. The TLD you ask? A quick look as I'm writing this shows that the little consulting company that held up the big bank for the name is happily using it today. How is this possible you ask? Did they return the money you ask? You ask a lot of questions don't you? Well anyway, the little consulting company wrote into the original sales agreement that should the big bank ever stop using the name for their new Internet bank, the TLD would revert to the little consulting company at no cost. And so it goes.
Slashdot | Domain Name Sold for Millions
