Domain Movers is always exciting as it is every changing. Large corporations spending some $$$ to secure a brand and you get an early insight into this because of domain name? YES! Large corporations SELLING domain names they already own… it happens and today proves it happens more than just once or twice..
Here is an “insiders view” of some recently purchased, registered and sold domain names by large corporations. These are often future brands, new products, new advertising campaigns and so much more. Enjoy!
Oliver Hoger of Virtual Real has acquired the domain name Robe.com from Hayneedle, Inc. The domain name has been registered since August 3, 2003 and was registered with NetNames and has since transferred to eNom.
Wiland Direct has acquired the domain name Wiland.net from BuyDomains.com. The domain has been registered since July 1, 2007 and the company uses Wiland.com as its main domain name. Wiland Direct is a marketing intelligence company.
General Motors LLC has acquired the domain name CenterOfLearning.com from a Jim Fandozzi of New York. The domain name has been registered since June 14, 1999. Jim had owned the domain name since at least 2008 according to whois history records.
SCTC.com has been sold by McAfee to a Chinese buyer using eName according to whois records. The transaction appears to have taken place about September 11, 2015.
Interhub.com which was owned by Easylink prior had a whois update and domain transfer to Safenames under Open Text Corporation.
Helix.com which was owned by GlaxoSmithKline has been sold according to whois records. The domain name has transferred to Safenames and prior to going into whois privacy displayed Helix OpCo LLC as the new owners of the domain name.
TTI.com (tti) which was owned by CitiBank has likely been sold. The domain name transferred out of CSC Corporate Domains to GoDaddy and was placed under whois privacy. A WordPress page has been added to the domain but isn’t really a “site” at this point. TTI.com has been registered since December 11, 1986! Consider the first registered .com domain name was March 15, 1985 and this is an old one!
YKX.com has been sold.
GhostSquad.com has been acquired by a currently unknown MarkMonitor client using DnStination Inc in whois records. The domain name has been registered since July 14, 2007. The last known owner according to whois records was Sparta Trading S.A. of Dubai and using Afternic name servers as of October 1, 2014. The domain then went into privacy protection at eNom. The domain transferred to GoDaddy on April 7, 2015 under privacy protection. On September 16, 2015 the domain name transferred to MarkMonitor.
Potential buyer? Nintendo as they have a game called Ghost Squad that is published by Sega. Nintendo is a CSC Corporate Domains client, so that kind of shoots Nintendo out of the picture? There is an cancelled trademark for the exact match term that was video game related. Game or a movie?
Microsoft, which several tech sites talked about an Android app in July 2015 with the name of Arrow Launcher that Microsoft quietly launched has acquired the domain names ArrowLauncher.com |net |org |info that was registered on July 25, 2015 by a Steve Macbeth using a hotmail email address at GoDaddy. EchoLauncher.com followed suit and was also owned by Steve Macbeth and also contained the .net, .org and .info domain names. Echo, Microsoft purchased the screenlock notification app about the same time.
Microsoft has also secured the domain name of its new browser MicrosoftEdge.com via UDRP
Apple Inc. has taken control of the domain name Mog.com. Mog was acquired by Beats Music, and Apple acquired Beats Music.
Twitter Inc. registered the domain names TwitterSign.com and TwitterSignal.com
Jazz.com has transferred out of MarkMonitor being listed as owned by Jazz.com LLC and connected to Vegas.com using Vegas.com name servers. The domain transferred to GoDaddy.com under whois privacy. I reached out to the past owner Danny Greenspun and he stated that he owns the domain name. This may be connected in some way with what TheDomains reported about Vegas.com potentially selling.
Disney Enterprises, Inc. registered the domain name ZombiesAndUnicorns.com adding to its domain name portfolio of nearly 19,000 domain names.
GoDaddy.com has sold the domain name Remodeling.com! The domain name was part of the Marchex domain name portfolio they acquired for about $28M in early 2015. Many of the premium domain names like Remodeling.com in the portfolio did not have a buy now price and the domains were mainly listed with a “make offer” at a minimum price of $50K. This was likely a six figure domain name sale IMO.
Whois records indicate that the buyers are Local Clarity For Internet Marketing (Localrity.com) located in Jordan. Visiting the domain name Remodeling.com directly, it states “Something really cool will be here soon” and provides a Leadicious.com email address. Localrity is a lead generation service.
MarkMonitor likely is practicing what it preaches to clients and registered a bunch of typo domain names of MarkMonitor.com… like MorkMonitor.com for an example and MirkMonitor.com. Mid to high XX amount of domains were registered.
RII.com (rii.com) has been acquired by Merck Sharp And Dohme Corp. RII.com was listed as owned by a Michael Parker with an email address of Covance.com, which is a contract research organization providing drug development and animal testing services. The two companies have worked together in the past.
There was a Merck branded site on RII.com back in 2010 and prior relating to “Rosetta” so this potentially may be a clear up of who owns the domain name? Since Merck had a website on it many years ago, the company was tied to in some fashion for a long time but only showed Covance owning it.
Barnes and Noble College Booksellers has acquired the domain name TrueFan.com from GoDaddy.com, a domain name that was part of the Marchex domain name portfolio purchase.
Barnes and Noble College Booksellers operates 724 US bookstores at colleges and universities according to BnCollege.com. B&N announced they are spinning off the company according to a NYTimes.com article in February 2015. The company would then be called Barnes & Noble Education.
I was able to find several images around the web with B&N using the hashtag #TrueFan in a message asking students to submit photos to instagram for a chance to be “on your bookstore homepage”.
147.com has been sold. The domain name was owned by Anthony Stewart of Great Britain and was for sale. The domain name is now owned by a Wuzhi Long of Fujian China.
Church & Dwight Co, Inc. owners of the brand Firs Response pregnancy test has registered the domain name FirstResponsePro.com. From what I can tell, there currently is not a product available by that name. Church & Dwight also registered the domain name AreYouAPregnancyPro.com. The later domain registration may point to a future advertising campaign.
Overstock.com, Inc. has acquired the domain name OLife.com. The domain name was on Fabulous.com name servers and under whois privacy protection prior to transferring from Fabulous to MarkMonitor.