The Domains

Someone is in VRSN pocket

This has been under-discussed in this thread. But looking to "government" (nee ICANN, nee Dept of Commerce) for help is not the answer, rather it's more the problem.

A while ago we had this headline about a no-bid contract awarded to Verisign. I don't know about recent developments, but a while ago this was an ongoing thing.[1]

Appeals Court Reverses & Allows Suit
Against Verisign To Go To Trial:
This Is A BIG Deal

You can bet there are people getting rich off of this. E.g.:[2]

Under the current contract, which expires Friday,
VeriSign was guaranteed four price increases
of up to 7 percent each on domain name registrations

There's chutzpah for you. Verisign was demanding more price increases to run infrastructure that has historically had crazy price deflation associated with it.

[1] http://www.thedomains.com/2009/06/05/appeals-court-reverses-allows-suit-against-verisign-to-go-to-trial/
[2] http://www.nwherald.com/mobile/article.xml/articles/2012/11/30/r_kfsc3e5dt9mw8jzl8d3g/index.xml

The policy used to arbitrate domain name disputes (UDRP or Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) dictates that building a company on a site like bufferapp.com doesn't give that company the right to the corresponding .com. (buffer.com) Attempting to sue to get the name is called "reverse domain name hijacking" and the arbitration committee is very very skeptical of those types of request.

Case in point: http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/16/rick-schwartz-wins-the-udrp-on-saveme-com-get-a-finding-of-reverse-domain-name-hijacking/

That being said, the price of the .com will track the perceived value of your company. It would be an awful waste to have to use a significant percentage of some round of funding to buy a domain name. Also, it seems like a significant percentage of your type-in traffic would be lost to the buffer.com. Even 10% of your type in traffic is probably worth the $xx,xxx you will pay for a decent .com name.

The arguments against paying for a decent .com seem weak.

Which it acquired itself in February 2014: http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/genius-and-loopfuse-are-acquired.html

Interesting timing. I would not be surprised if the May launch of genius.com was just something hacked together over a weekend and launched just to push the domain price up.

There isn't much talk about genius.com around the May launch (apart from a bit of press-release marketing). And the focus in acquisition in February leads with LeadRocket, tacking on the brand Genius as an afterthought.

The domain details of genius.com was only switched to CallidusCloud's details in June: http://www.thedomains.com/2014/07/11/rapgenius-com-upgrades-rebrand-to-genius-com/ -- 4 months after acquiring the domain.

Interesting set of coincidences. I wonder when Callidus software knew of RapGenius' interest in the genius.com domain. And their original intentions for it when they acquired it in February.

Mostly agree with your input.

Though "Absolutely no domainer takes estibot seriously" is a bit of an exaggeration, I think.

Estibot is regularly mentioned on TheDomains.com (widely seen as the authority on domain name market news).

Mentioned here for example: http://www.thedomains.com/2008/05/11/using-estibotcom-what-are-the-best-and-worst-buys-of-the-live-traffic-auction/

http://www.thedomains.com/2011/11/03/ira-com-sells-for-seven-figures/

Of course it's an automated tool and is not perfect. But it can be used as a reference point.

One can only speculate as there are only two other single-letter .com's (q.com and z.com) and there won't be others [1] . Wiki article says "GMO Internet, Inc. purchased Z.com for nearly $6.8 million from Nissan, who previously used it for the Nissan Z series cars." [2] For comparison, asking price for b.org or r.org are $500k but .org's typically command less than .com's.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain
[2] https://www.thedomains.com/2014/11/21/z-com-sold-for-6-8-million-dollars/

So yep, I'm not too concerned about this. ICANN aren't a great organisation, and they seem to mainly bring out new TLDs to get more money.

ICANN is a non-profit whom CEO gets ~1M/year. Executives earn a bonus of more than 50% of their base salaries if specific goals are reached, such as adding a new gTLD.

Source: http://www.thedomains.com/2010/02/11/nonprofit-icann-releases-salaries-beckstrom-over-2-2-million-guaranteed-cfo-270k-lawyer-230k-plus-plus/

I really hope this top-level domain thing isn't going anywhere.