A look back at smart domain name company acquisitions.
There’s been a lot of consolidation in the domain name industry over the past couple years. Here are five acquisitions that have (or will) payoff handsomely for the acquirer.
Thought Convergence acquires Name Intelligence. Thought Convergence runs the TrafficZ domain parking network, LeaseThis.com, and the soon-to-be-launched Aftermarket.com. Name Intelligence runs the popular Domain Tools site, owns a registrar and hosting business, and the Domain Roundtable conference. For Thought Convergence, they instantly added hundreds of thousands of registered users to cross market other products too. They also get access to Domain Tools’ treasure trove of data for business purposes, a contract with Google for whois data sharing, and a well known domain conference. Running a domain conference will probably prove more beneficial than just paying big sponsorship fees.
Marchex acquires Name Development (UltSearch). This famous transaction started consolidation of domain portfolios and gave Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) a headstart to building out a massive destination network. It now owns both advertiser relationships and its own traffic. UltSearch came with some trademark headaches, but overall it was a winner.
Name Media acquires Afternic. Name Media bought exchange Afternic for $3.7 million in 2006 (with possible bonuses of up to $1.55 million.) This gave Name Media inroads into the domainer community to cross market its parking services and boost its inventory available to sell to small and mid-sized business.
VeriSign acquires Network Solutions. But wait! Didn’t they take a bath on this and later spin out the registrar business? Yes, but this gave them the lucrative monopoly on managing the .com and .net registries. (Disclaimer: this deal happened way back in 2000).
Demand Media acquires Enom. Why start your own registrar when you can buy the second biggest in the world? Demand Media bought a huge crowd of resellers to push its other products, including .tv domains (for which it has a marketing agreement).
Francois says
You forgot Oversee acquired SnapNames and Moniker.
Francois says
And Sedo purchased GreatDomains.com
Joe Bloniarz says
Oversee acquired snapnames and it was a BUST snapnamse lost its largest account Networksolutions! Snapnames has always been on a thread and losing NSI was bad bad for snapnames.
Andrew says
I agree with Joe. Although Oversee is making the best of the SnapNames acquisition, it really got screwed on the defection of SnapNames and enom.
As for Moniker, good buy that got big domainer’s portfolios, and should be close to being on list.
GreatDomains.com…a good buy but nowhere near the top 5 acquisitions.
Generic Domain Names admin says
Nice compilations but some other acquisitions like Sedo of GreatDomains, Moniker joining Oversee.net, Demand Media buying Pluck etc. can also be included in the list.
Francois says
Andrew I though you invented the title after creating the content and that you simply forgot the others purchases and/or consolidations.
If it’s the inverse (like it look likes now) then yes you are right about SEDO but VeriSign should have been replaced (very old story) by Oversee.
Take care.
Stephen Douglas says
Andrew, are you baiting me?
lol
Andrew says
I don’t view Demand Media buying Pluck as a domain company acquisition (Pluck has little to do with domain names). I agree with a couple comments here that Moniker was a good buy for Oversee.
Stephen, I think everything baits you 🙂
Stephen Douglas says
[Stephen, I think everything baits you 😀 ]
lol… owwwww Andrew, ya got me! touché! 😀
Seriously, I think Oversee’s purchase of Moniker and Snapnames puts them ahead in domain name auctions, live and online. Everything is thoughtfully coming together for these two systems to work seamlessly in providing different venues and a robust system for selling domains. Plus, Moniker is one of the top three domainer registrars in my book. This powerful pairing of companies is the one to watch for 2009.
And stop putting up so many good articles, broey. I can’t write about anything anymore on my blog because I don’t want to ride your royal coat tails!