News
Cloudflare announces no-markup domain name registrar
Company will charge registrants exactly what it has to pay the registrar and ICANN.
Cloudflare announced today that it is expanding its domain name registrar offering in a bid that could shake up the domain name registration business.
The key feature: wholesale pricing with no markup.
Yes, that means you pay the same amount that registrars currently pay Verisign for a .com domain. It’s $7.85 plus the 18 cents paid to ICANN, or $8.03.
Cloudflare launched a highly-secure registrar in 2016 but it was designed only to serve companies that needed multiple layers of authentication before changes were made to domains. The new move will help the registrar go mainstream.
Each at-cost domain will come with Whois privacy, too.
The company says there’s no reason to markup the price of a domain name because there’s very little overhead involved with registering a domain name. That ignores support, of course, which could be more of an expense than Cloudflare anticipates.
Given that it will lose a little bit of money with this new service, it clearly has other goals in mind. Beyond the obvious benefit of getting more customers who can use other products, there could be a data play here, too.
Speaking of data, Cloudflare’s pricing structure will give the industry a good set of data: how much the wholesale price is for each top level domain name. While this is public information for some domains, it’s not public for ccTLDs and new top level domains.
Cloudflare is supporting 224 top level domains at launch. It is opening up the service with an invite program to existing customers.
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Innovation HQ asks USPTO to cancel “Weeds” trademarks
Weeds.com domain name owner alleges that weed control company committed fraud to get trademark.
Weeds, Inc. has already been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking for Weeds.com. The domain owner has filed an appeal to cancel Weeds, Inc’s trademarks.
Innovation HQ has filed with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel trademarks for “weeds” registered to Weeds, Inc.
The move comes after Weeds, Inc. was found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a cybersquatting dispute at World Intellectual Property Organization for the domain Weeds.com. Weeds, Inc. also filed a cybersquatting lawsuit to try to get the domain name.
Innovation HQ is fighting back. In counterclaims made in the lawsuit, it asks for damages for reverse domain name hijacking and for cancellation of the trademarks.
Earlier this month it also filed two cases with USPTO to cancel Weeds, Inc.’s marks.
Innovation HQ alleges that Weeds, Inc. committed fraud on the USPTO when it applied for trademark registration 3308883. After the examining attorney for the USPTO sent an office action noting that “Weeds” was merely descriptive of Weeds, Inc.’s service, Weeds Inc. referred to a court case in which it said a federal court agreed that the mark “Weeds” was suggestive and not merely descriptive.
In its request for cancellation, Innovation HQ says that the federal court did not make any such legal conclusion and that Weeds, Inc. committed fraud on the trademark office to suggest otherwise.
The other cancellation request is for a trademark application that Weeds, Inc. made earlier this year. Innovation HQ says that it’s generic and merely descriptive.
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Digging into MMX and its earnings
Top level domain seller has improved its revenue base but still struggles with its legacy.
Earlier today I wrote about Minds + Machine’s (MMX) first-half revenue. This afternoon I had the chance to talk to MMX CEO Toby Hall and dive into the company’s full earnings report.
Hall is confident in the company’s trajectory. The company forecasts that its renewal revenue will begin covering its full cost base within the next 24 months.
Renewal revenue is something Hall has been harping on since he took over as CEO of the company. He believes that investors understand subscription businesses and will reward the company if it creates a stable base of renewal revenue.
That’s clearly part of the rationale behind the company’s purchase of ICM Registry earlier this year. The company has a steady base of registrations and renewals across its TLDs, most notably .XXX.
MMX picked it up for about 9 times profit. It will help shore up MMX’s revenue base to help investors value the company. When Hall took over, the company’s market valuation wasn’t based on any fundamentals. Now investors are valuing it at about 15-17 times operating profit.
The steady base of revenue is helping MMX look at different opportunities. Hall is particularly excited about what the company is doing with the .Luxe domain and Ethereum Name Service. It remains to be seen how the Ethereum Name Service deal will impact registrations, but Hall looks it kind of like R&D.
The company is still struggling with some of the legacy of the company, though. In its published earnings report it gave details on a burdensome contract that it has already renegotiated once:
In 2016, the Company successfully renegotiated aspects of the given contract to reduce the then marketing obligations of $10.8 million to nearly half this amount under the condition that those marketing funds be provided directly to the commercial partner to manage. In addition, the Company negotiated that the runway on its 2017 minimum guaranteed commitment be extended from 12 months to 17 months to allow the revised marketing strategy to come into effect. To date, a significant portion of that marketing budget has been spent by the partner with minimal impact on revenues in the current year and no expectation of any material uplift in future periods. Accordingly, given recent performance, and expected future performance, the Company is now impairing the asset ($4.1 million) and is providing for a one-time onerous contract provision in the amount of $7 million, reflecting the future expected losses of $1.7 million per year above revenue for the remainder of the contract, based on flat growth of the asset. The provision reflects net future obligations (i.e., cash due above total revenue per annum), which will be paid from 2018 until the contract end in August 2021. The Company will seek to renegotiate a more equitable settlement given the losses incurred on this asset (c. $11.9 million) since the start of the contract, as a result of the terms agreed by former management.
Although the company will not disclose this partnership by name, it’s quite clearly .London. There are a couple of observations here.
First, broad marketing of namespaces isn’t moving the needle.
Second, the deal MMX inked with .London before new TLDs came out shows just how bullish the company’s founders were. That contract was a heck of a bet for such an early stage company. It turned out to be a very bad bet.
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MMX reports earnings: .XXX to help, one-off sales to hurt
Company looks forward to contribution from ICM Registry domain names.
Top level domain name company Minds + Machines (MMX) reported first half earnings today and set out expectations for the rest of the year.
The company reported revenue of $6.4 million in H1 2018, up from $5.3 million in H1 2017. A better measure of revenue takes into account partner payments. That was $5.3 million, up from $4.3 million.
While MMX acquired ICM Registry, the company that runs the .xxx top level domain, in the first half its contribution was only for two weeks. ICM will add significantly to the company’s performance in the second half of the year, but the company cautions that one-off high ticket premium domain sales last year will create headwinds on this year’s second half because the company doesn’t foresee a repeat performance.
The company also reported good results with .VIP. During the second anniversary of its launch, renewal rates were 76%. This is despite a bursting of the Chinese domain name bubble. 9 of the top 10 registrars for .VIP are Chinese.
I am speaking with MMX CEO Toby Hall later today and will have more commentary.
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CentralNic revenue hits £11.2 million in first half of year
Revenue grows thanks to .sk acquisition.
Domain name company CentralNic (London AIM:CNIC) reported earnings for the first half of 2018, posting revenue of £11.2 million. That’s up from £10.6 million in the same period of 2017, although comparing across time periods is difficult with CentralNic because it grows by acquisition.
For example, the acquisition of Slovakia’s .sk country code domain added £1.6m to the top line. So organic revenue was actually down year-over-year. H2 numbers will be even more convoluted due to the acquisition of KeyDrive.
Retail revenue generated from its registrars including Instra and Internet.bs was down £1.2 million year-over-year. The company said this was expected as the “division continued to realign and optimise its online marketing strategy for improved return on investment, resulting in higher margins and profitability despite reduced revenue.”
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Two more companies call it quits on dot-brand top level domains
Blanco GmbH and SPIEGEL terminate top level domain names.
Two companies have notified ICANN that they no longer wish to operate their dot-brand top level domain names.
Blanco GmbH is a kitchen company that sells faucets and sinks. It is terminating the .blanco top level domain name.
Publishing company SPIEGEL-Verlag Rudolf Augstein GmbH & Co. KG separately informed ICANN that it wishes to terminate .spiegel.
Neither company appears to have used their top level domain names other than to create the mandatory nic.TLD website.
Both of the companies only applied for one domain name, so this marks their complete withdrawal from the new TLD program.
A complete list of companies to withdraw top level domain names is here.
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I ordered takeout and went down this domain name rabbit hole.
Why it takes me a while to order takeout.
I sometimes get distracted by domain name stuff when I — hey look, squirrel!
I ordered takeout this weekend from a local restaurant, Russell’s Bakery. It took me down a bit of a domain name rabbit hole.
While visiting the restaurant’s website to read the menu, I was impressed with the layout and structure: a clean mobile design, easy-to-read menu (no .pdf!). It wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the homepage that I realized it was built on GoCentral, which I reviewed last week.
When I clicked the “Online Order” link I was in for another domain name surprise: the site was ordering.app. This is the first time I’ve come across a .app domain in my normal browsing.
Ordering.app is run by an Austin company called MAVN Online Ordering. It provides online ordering capabilities for a lot of local restaurants such as Torchy’s Tacos, Thundercloud Subs, Cabo Bob’s and JuiceLand.
JuiceLand is an Austin-based juice bar that paid $20,000 back in 2015 to acquire the domain name JuiceLand.com. It also used to own the new TLD Juice.Land and promoted it on the site of juice bottles, but it subsequently let the domain name expire.
As you can see, ordering takeout can be a bit involved for me.
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GoDaddy adds tool to refine domain searches with more information
Tool gets more search data from user to suggest available domain names.
A big challenge for domain name registrars is understanding what a domain searcher is looking for based on just a keyword or two.
GoDaddy has added a feature that collects more information to provide customized domain name choices and hopefully chip away at this problem.
The feature is available when a domain you search for is unavailable. It’s currently being tested with a small number of customers. You’ll see a “refine” button on the notice that the domain is taken:
This takes you to a form asking for more information that can be used to create domain suggestions. The form asks for keywords, the business category, your location (suggesting a city name or zip code) and your name. The business category is a fixed list, but it’s big.
I originally searched for Hockey.com and then clicked the refine button. Here’s the info I added:
Here are the results:
While I like the idea, it’s clear that the refine tool could use a bit of refining. I chose the hockey category and put hockey as a keyword, yet some of the results are for football. I also think it should take the zip code and include the corresponding city name.
For another example, after searching for juice.land, I submitted the following refinement data:
This returned no results. I went back and deleted “bar” as a keyword and got results. This is puzzling since the category is “juice bar”.
The list included a lot of domains ending in .land, so it’s clear that the refinement tool also includes data from the original search.
It’s worth noting that the refine tool returns mostly available domain names but also includes the occasional premium domain from AfternicDLS.
Bottom line: good idea but needs work.
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Doh! State Bar of California loses cybersquatting dispute
Organization that oversees California lawyers let domain expire and loses cybersquatting challenge to get the domain back.
The State Bar of California let the domain calsb.org expire and failed to get it back in a UDRP.
The State Bar of California–the group responsible for admitting attorneys to practice in California–has shown its member how not to argue a cybersquatting dispute.The organization let one of its domain names, Calsb.org, expire last year. It first registered the domain name in 1996.
It filed a cybersquatting complaint under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) with National Arbitration Forum in an effort to get the domain back. In the dispute, it failed to persuade panelist Debrett G. Lyons that the Calsb.org domain name is confusingly similar to a mark in which the Bar has rights.
The State Bar of California has a registered trademark for “The State Bar of California” and claims that it has unregistered trademark rights in “California State Bart” and “Calsb”. Lyons determined that the domain name is not confusingly similar to the first two and calsb could stand for many things.
Regarding unregistered rights to Calsb, Lyons was unconvinced by the evidence the Complainant submitted.
The Bar previously won a UDRP in 2001 for CAStateBar.com and in 2005 for CaliforniaStateBar.com. Its official website is calbar.ca.gov.
Calsb.org was purchased in a GoDaddy expired domain name auction last year for $676. This morning the domain name forwarded to a zero click parking page for a scam security warning.
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Why Cyril Fremont just bought an entire TLD – DNW Podcast #203
Entrepreneur has a unique idea for the .best top level domain name.
My guest is Cyril Fremont, an entrepreneur who recently acquired the .Best top level domain name. His story is very different from most people running a new top level domain. Fremont originally looked at acquiring a TLD as a way to save money because his internet marketing company was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on domain registrations each year. Now he has an innovative idea for .best that involves cryptocurrency and helping people create review sites.
Also: GoDaddy gets Cognate, .Amazon and more.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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What new TLD registrar data can tell you about the health of a namespace
Which registrars are top for a domain can help explain TLD growth.
It can be difficult to judge the success of a top level domain based on the number of registrations. Unfortunately, that’s all we usually have. But digging down just one level can give a hint about the quality of a namespace’s registrations.
Take a look at the #10 domain on nTLDstat’s charts: .LTD.
It appears that this domain is doing quite well with about 500,000 names in the zone file. But take a look at the breakdown by registrar and things look fishy.
Alibaba is #1 with 93% of the market. West.cn is #2 with another 3% of the market. So over 95% of registrations are at Chinese domain name registrars.
The “Limited” corporate identifier comes from the UK but also extends to former colonies. Think Hong Kong. And there’s a corporate identifier in China that translates to Limited.
But over 93% of registrations coming through one Chinese registrar? Such a big skew to one Chinese registrar is perplexing.
It’s also strange when you see sudden jumps in registrations outside of the launch phases:
This suggests that much of the activity is based on promotions and bulk registrations rather than people registering the domains to use for their business.
Compare this to Google’s .app and its 300k+ registrations. The #1 registrar is GoDaddy, which is a good sign because GoDaddy is by far the largest registrar in the world. #2 is Google, which makes sense given that it’s Google’s TLD. Then you have Namecheap, West263 and Name.com. Seems reasonable.
Are many of these registrations from investors? Sure, but these are also likely spread out across many domain investors. I also like how smooth this registration curve is:
This isn’t to say that there’s a problem with the business model of targeting Chinese domain investors. At the same time, it’s worth looking at the registrar data and trend lines to understand more about how a TLD is growing.
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Company that uses Blockchain.com faces the challenge of owning a generic domain
Company files trademark lawsuit against Blockchain.io owner.
A cryptocurrency company that owns the domain names Blockchain.com and Blockchain.info has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against the owner of Blockchain.io alleging infringement of its “Blockchain” mark.
Are you asking, “Wait, someone has a trademark for the term blockchain?” That’s a fair question.
The plaintiffs, BLOCKCHAIN LUXEMBOURG S.A. & BLOCKCHAIN (US), INC. have a design mark for its logo. It argues it also has some sort of common law rights in the term blockchain, but I’m having difficulty understanding how it differentiates its brand from the common term for the technology upon which cryptocurrencies are based. Here’s how the company tries to draw a distinction:
Blockchain does not claim exclusive rights to the word “blockchain” to describe the technology underlying cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, and used for virtually limitless other applications and by many industries, of which digital currency is only a small subset. Rather, it claims exclusive rights in the BLOCKCHAIN marks, which it has been using exclusively for its Blockchain Products and which have become well and favorably known to consumers throughout the United States and the world as identifying its highly regarded and secure services. As a reflection of Blockchain’s status and popularity, its website at www.blockchain.com is the first organic result of a Google search for “blockchain.”
This reminds me a bit of this FedEx commercial:
It’s difficult to see how the plaintiff claims rights in the Blockchain mark.
Here’s one of its claims:
“Except for two letters, Paymium’s URL www.blockchain.io is identical to Blockchain’s URL www.blockchain.info.”
Well, yes. You can say that about any .io (or .in) domain and any .info domain. You can also say that .net is only three letters different from .com.
Any use of the term blockchain for a business related to blockchain technology is going to be very, very hard to protect as a trademark.
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Only.com? Not quite.
A confusing logo led me to the wrong domain name.
An advertisement for a furniture store in St. Louis
I was watching a Cardinals baseball game recently and saw an interesting advertisement behind home plate (see image above).
What’s the domain name being promoted here? Having never heard of this company, I wondered if its domain name was Only.com. It seemed odd for a company named Weekends to use this domain. But Only.com seemed to be highlighted in the ad.
Only.com isn’t the domain name–it’s WeekendsOnly.com. The name of the business is actually Weekends Only, and its logo looks like the ad minus the .com:
After seeing the logo, I can understand the placement of the .com in the ad. I’m sure people in St. Louis who are familiar with this store would understand that the domain name is WeekendsOnly.com, but it wasn’t clear to me and I’m sure other people who aren’t familiar with the brand would agree. I probably should take issue with the logo rather than how the company promoted its website.
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IP Blockchain company Cognate picked up by GoDaddy
GoDaddy takes on Cognate team.
Cognate, a trademark-in-the-blockchain company, is joining GoDaddy.
I interviewed Cognate founder Bennet Collen on the DNW Podcast last year and he explained how the company uses blockchain to record proof-of-use of trademarks.
The startup announced the news on its blog today.
The release makes it sound like more of a technology purchase and acquihire than an outright acquisition. The current business model will likely be different going forward. The company wrote:
We’re going to be working hard with the GoDaddy team on future trademark and documentation management services – there are some exciting things on the horizon!
If you’re an existing Cognate customer, we are sending you an email with more information to address questions or concerns you might have.
Any information that has already been recorded on the blockchain remains there in perpetuity (which is why we adopted blockchain in the first place!), and in the future we’ll release a tool that will enable you to access that information.
Another domain name company, Donuts, invested in Cognate earlier this year.
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How fast should a new top level domain name grow?
Without artificial stimulation, a new TLD should grow slowly.
Slow and steady is the name of the game for top level domains.
On this week’s podcast I interviewed Jay Daley, the interim CEO of Public Interest Registry (.Org).
We talked briefly about the organization’s foray into new top level domain names. Daley said:
“We need to recognize that a new gTLD, when it is operated in a good way, will have slow growth, and it will take some many years to get to a large size. That is pretty straightforward for when you examine the history of, say, .org or any ccTLD or any of the others.”
He noted that .org started with slow growth until it got traction. Of course, .org was aided by the growth of the web as well.
The discussion got me thinking about the current market for new top level domain names that were released starting in 2014. A lot of new TLD applicants had strong expectations for initial demand. Even PIR’s CEO at the time set a goal of one million .NGO domains. He was smart to not add a timeframe, but that goal seems unlikely to ever be met.
Some domain names have logical upper bounds for the near term. If there are fewer than 15,000 registration in .com that include the word rugby or cricket, you can’t expect .rugby or .cricket to suddenly have more than 15,000 registrations.
When you see domains exceeding your natural expectations, you can usually find a reason. .Cricket actually has about 30,000 registrations. Almost all of those were registered at Namecheap or Alpnames, and surely at very low prices. They weren’t registered to create sites about cricket.
Even as the number of sites about rugby and cricket grow over time, it’s going to be a slow trickle, not a flood.
Looking at all of the new TLDs that have topped one million registrations, all of them have essentially purchased registrations. They’ve done this with extreme discounting, giveaways, etc.
That’s not to say that they haven’t done other smart things. .Club markets the heck out of its TLD. At the same time, it heavily discounts them. (Listen to my interview with .Club CEO Colin Campbell to understand how this works.)
The “natural” number of .Club registrations would be quite a bit lower without the discounting programs.
In general, here’s how I expect a new TLD to grow:
- Initial bump from zero during sunrise, landrush and the first part of general availability.
- A slow trickle upwards during the first year.
- A drop around the one year anniversary.
- Slow growth from there.
If the growth trend is different, look for a reason.
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Test driving the GoDaddy GoCentral website builder
GoDaddy’s GoCentral is the simplest website builder I’ve reviewed so far. Whether that’s good or bad depends on the type of user you are.
I’ve previously reviewed my experience building a website on Wix, Squarespace and Weebly. Today, we’ll look at GoDaddy’s GoCentral.
GoDaddy launched the GoCentral Website Builder in early 2017 with much fanfare including a SuperBowl ad.
GoCentral is different from the other website builders I’ve reviewed so far. It’s meant to be simpler and easier to get started. Users should be able to create a website in under an hour. It’s also mobile-first, meaning it was designed from the ground up to build websites on a mobile device.
Building
The first step you take to build a site with GoCentral is to pick a category. I tried to stump GoDaddy by picking a category I thought was esoteric: an auto body shop site for AtlantaBodyShop.com.
To my surprise, there were many variants to choose from including auto repair, auto road services, auto restoration and yes, auto body shops.
Later, when speaking to GoDaddy, I found out there are 1,600 categories in the system. This list changes based on popularity and is even localized. For example, customers in Germany can choose an Oktoberfest category.
Once you pick a category, GoCentral creates a fairly good website that just needs a few content blocks filled out. It even takes information from your GoDaddy account to populate information such as your address and phone number.
You can also select from a few different design themes on top of the template, as well as a color scheme and font. This just changes the overall feel of the site while the elements and content stay the same.
The templates are designed with the elements each type of business needs. For example, the focal point of my body shop page is a “book online” button.
With the cheapest plan, the Book Online button sends visitors to a contact form. With more advanced plans it sends them to an online scheduling system.
Once the basics of the site are in place you can start editing content and adding pages.
One area in which GoCentral is unique is that it offers a different experience and integrations for each type of business. For example, restaurants will be offered an integration with OpenTable. There’s even a difference in site components based on if a restaurant is fast casual or fine dining.
GoCentral is by far the simplest website creator I’ve used. That simplicity helps GoDaddy meet its goal of enabling people to create a website from their smartphone in under an hour.
Heidi Gibson, Sr. Director of Product Management and Marketing at GoDaddy, told me that over half of people outside the U.S. start building their GoCentral site on their mobile phone. Even in the U.S., about 40% do. Those are shocking numbers, and other site builders are going to have to play catchup.
The simplicity and mobile-first approach does restrict flexibility, however. It’s not a drag and drop system and is made up of rigid blocks instead. If you need lots of flexibility and customization, GoCentral isn’t for you.
Packages
GoDaddy recently made changes to its GoCentral packages that are a big improvement.
The entry-level Personal package is $5.99 a month. It includes the basic features and SSL, which was not in the Personal package until just recently.
The business package at $9.99 a month adds a PayPal Buy Now or Donate button and additional SEO tools.
If you want to accept online appointments, accept credit cards, send email marketing, connect to social media accounts and connect a business listing on Google My Business, the Business Plus package is $14.99 a month.
An ecommerce package is $19.99 a month.
For most local small businesses, the Business Plus option is likely the best choice. But the personal plan is a good starting point for a company making the move from no website or a Facebook page to a website.
Publishing and Promoting
Publishing is simple, aided by the fact that GoDaddy is a domain name registrar.
If your domain is already at GoDaddy, you can click a link and it will automatically make DNS changes to your domain. (In my case it didn’t seem to work until I changed the nameservers to GoDaddy’s default, but I might have just needed to be more patient.)
Because there’s no drag-and-drop functionality, you can expect your mobile site to be clean and function well. There’s no separate editing of a mobile version.
With my Personal site, I was able to make basic SEO improvements such as changing meta descriptions. You’ll need to upgrade to the business plan to get additional SEO features. Also, there’s no direct connection to Google Search Console.
Adding Google Analytics and even a Facebook Pixel are very simple as well.
Overall
GoCentral is a great choice for small businesses. It’s the easiest site builder I’ve tested, and it should be simple for even a novice to create a site in under an hour. If you need lots of flexibility and customization, then GoCentral is not the best choice. For people busy running their business cleaning homes or seating customers, it’s a good bet.
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Those domains you’re sitting on? They will probably never sell.
Domainers need to think about their long-term strategy for the domains they buy.
Your neighbors here are not going to be impressed by your domain portfolio.
Rick Schwartz wrote his viewpoint on the state of domain investing today. He’s never one to mince words, and I think he has some fair points in his post.
What stuck with me is how he concluded the post. Writing about what happens when you invest in a domain, Rick noted:
“They are not liquid. You own it and there is less than a 50/50 chance you will sell it in YOUR lifetime.”
Depending on the type of domains you own and/or the prices you sell them for, 50/50 is actually overshooting the mark. This is especially the case with Rick. He owns some fantastic domains but holds out for top dollar. Unless he ultimately sells his portfolio or liquidates them, he’ll take a lot of his domains to the grave.
That might sound harsh, but it’s the reality of domain names. Some people churn through their portfolio at 1%-2% a year. Others sell their portfolio to GoDaddy to head into retirement.
What amazes me is when people hold onto their very illiquid domains, passing up great offers with no real plan for the end game.
I’ve seen multiple times where the very best possible buyer (i.e., one of the only people in the world who could possibly be interested in a domain) makes a very generous offer on the domain. Their maximum offer. It is rejected.
Let’s say that person offers $60,000 for a domain. Given the domain and the pool of buyers, there’s maybe one or two other potential buyers in the world. The domain owner passes.
What are they waiting for? What’s their goal? Do they want to wait until the one-in-a-million buyer comes along and offers $100,000?
You also have to think about your annualized return. If you pass up $60,000 and that one-in-a-million buyer actually does show up 10 years from now and you sell for $100,000, you only made about 5% a year in that decade you waited. There are plenty of other investments that can return 5% a year.
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How Dropbox got the Dropbox.com domain name
Co-founder tells the engaging story on Tim Ferris’ podcast.
Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston explained the long journey to acquiring Dropbox.com. Photo courtey Dropbox.
Dropbox founder Drew Houston was on The Tim Ferriss Show recently and discussed how his business was able to get the Dropbox.com domain name. It’s a long interview, but tune in around 1:12:25 to hear the story.
They started with GetDropbox.com but obviously wanted to drop the ‘get’. After getting brushed off by the domain owner many times, Houston and his co-founder drove to the guy’s house with a bottle of champagne.
The two explained why they were interested in the domain and that they had just gotten funding from Sequoia. Although he joked that they were “hemorrhaging leverage” by giving the full story, they decided that playing coy hadn’t gotten them anywhere so far.
That was a Friday night. They left excited about the potential of getting the domain. They drove back to his house on Monday, only to have him say ‘nope’.
Then Dropbox launched publicly and the domain owner started receiving emails from people who wanted to get in on the beta. He added Whois privacy and made one other change…he parked the domain with ads.
According to Houston, the ads were for all of their competitors.
So Houston looked into trademark law. He found out that you can’t just take a domain from someone because they aren’t using it. But now that the registrant was confusing visitors with ads for rivals, that created a legal issue.
Dropbox sued the domain owner.
That led to further discussions to sell the domain. Dropbox offered him cash or stock. He took $300,000 in cash.
Houston said that the stock would be worth “hundreds of millions” at today’s valuation. Dropbox is now a public company with a $10 billion market cap.
(Hat tip: Jeff Sass)
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Categories: Domains
Domain names ending in .Charity available starting today
Donuts released .charity domain names today.
Domain names ending in the .Charity top level domain name are now available in general availability.
A quick survey of domain name registrars shows that prices are generally in the $25-$35/year range.
Top level domain name company Donuts faced a multi-year battle for rights to operate the domain name. The Independent Objector filed a community objection against Donuts’ and Famous Four Media’s applications for the TLD. A panelist agreed with the Independent Objector when it came to Donuts’ application, but allowed Famous Four Media’s application to go forward because of a Public Interest Commitment it submitted.
Needless to say, Donuts was rather upset. It challenged the decision with an Independent Review Panel and won. That kicked it back to a panel to rehear the original objection and it took another year for the panel to find in Donuts’ favor. All told it was a 4-5 year delay.
Donuts paid off Famous Four Media earlier this year to win the contention set.
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Uniregistry tips hand with “Registry in a Box” trademark application
Company wants to use “Registry in a Box” for registry services product.
Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry runs its own technical registry for its top level domain names such as .tattoo and .diet. It also provides these services to other top level domains such as Cayman Island’s .ky domain name.
Apparently, Uniregistry wants to up its game in this department. It just applied to register a trademark for “Registry in a Box”.
The intent-to-use application is for “Domain name registry services, namely, coordinating the registration of domain names on the Internet; providing an online computer database in the field of domain name registration information”. It was filed on September 10.
I wonder how this company feels about Uniregistry’s choice of name.
The registry business is extremely cutthroat these days with prices racing to the bottom. Frank has been looking ahead to the next round of top level domains, but that is many years away.
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