Technology

Domain names: a market of great and growing importance

Buying and selling domain names is big business. The nature of the birth of the Internet is one of the big reasons that domain names have become so important and have attracted so much monetary attention.

This year, 15 names used in Internet addresses have been resold for at least six figures to companies and individuals hoping to reach large audiences. On.com made $ 635,000. Macau.com sold for $ 550,000.

Sex.com acquired a record $ 12 million in cash and stock from adult entertainment company Escom in January, according to industry reports and sources with knowledge of the deal, who declined to be named due to the private nature of the sale. .

As the Internet began to grow and become more and more important, more and more normal entrepreneurs realized the potential of this new tool. However, many of these business men and women logged in to find their trademarked phrases and titles already used by other users with different intentions. Under these pretexts, the domain name market was born.

Today, the market is dominated by this foray between large, established companies and those that came first to the Internet. We see a lot of transfers between companies, as those that were able to get their names first sell their URLs to large companies that have taken longer to join the World Wide Web.

These transactions represent a very large business and are creating a very important market of their own. Sales of 5,851 domain names generated $ 29 million in 2005, compared to the sale of 3,813 names for $ 15 million in 2004, says market researcher Zetetic. And the pace is picking up: In the first three months of this year, 1,949 names have generated $ 14.2 million, he says. Domain name journal magazine.

“The domain name is 21st century real estate,” says Warren Adelman, president of GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain name registrar, with 12.9 million. “The economy is increasingly being driven by the Internet sector.”

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