Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Fri 14th August 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Soccer Star Lionel Messi Files UDRP Seeking Control of 2 Domains Including Messi.com - The Soccer Star Lionel Messi, who may regard to be the best Soccer player in the world, has Filed UDRP Seeking Control of two Domain names Messi.com and Lionelmessi.com The UDRP was filed by the soccer star whose full name is Lionel Andres Messi Cuccittini. Messi.com has been owned under privacy since January but privacy was lifted to once the UDRP was filed and the domain name is owned by Lewis Jumpp of the UK. Prior to January of this year, domain investor Andy Booth of the UK, has owned the domain ... read more ...
 
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Yahoo! Inc. Sells 2 Letter Domain Name AV.com - Yahoo! Inc. has sold the premium 2 letter domain name AV.com according to whois records. The domain name has transferred to domain name registrar eName. Also according to whois records, the buyer is a Jack Shen from Shanghai China. This isn’t the first time that Yahoo! has offered AV.com, as they listed the domain for sale on Sedo.com in 2013 but the domain name did not sell at that time when it had a reserve price range of $1,000,00-$1,499,999. Yahoo! did sell Sandwich.com for $137K and several ... read more ...
Thu 13th August 2015
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Breaking: 8.xyz Hits a DOMAINfest .asia Auction during No Reserve -     The domain name 8.XYZ will be in the auction as part of the DOMAINfest.asia conference that will be held in Macau China from September 4th- 7th. RightoftheDot.com in conjunction with 4.CN will be holding an online domain name auction of around 150+ domains from September 2nd-September 9th. The auction will be in English and Chinese and bids will be show in US dollars and Chinese Yuan. All transactions will be cleared through DN.Cn which is the leading escrow service in China. The number 8 ... read more ...
 
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A Band You Never Heard Of Bitches About Having To Pay For Pavement.com or The FB Page - A interesting story in contactmusic.com, about a band from the 90’s name Payment is bitching about not being able to simply get the domain name Pavement.com and/or a Facebook page by that name that is held by one of those nasty “Cybersquatters”. Here is the title of the story: “Rockers Pavement Spent Years With No Official Presence On Social Media Because They Refused To Pay A Fortune To A Cybersquatter For Their Domain Name.” “The cult band split in 1999 and by the time they reunited ... read more ...
 
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Another New gTLD For Google: Buys/Registered Premium Domain ABC.Global - Google has bought another new gTLD for its Alphabet brand which is using the domain name abc.xyz Google registered/bought the premium domain name ABC.Global yesterday though its registrar Mark Monitor. .Global has around 4,000 domain names that are priced with premium registration fees through the domain name registrar channel (however many registrars will not be selling those premium domain names until the end of August). Rolf Larsen the CEO of .Global told thedomains.com that ABC.Global was priced ... read more ...
 
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Autobytel Buys Dealix, Owner Of UsedCars.com In $25 Million Deal - Publicly traded Autobytel Inc. (Nasdaq: ABTL) has acquired Dealix, owner of UsedCars.com for $25 Million in an all cash deal. The registrant for the domain name UsedCars.com was CDK Global, LLC and they are a wholly-owned subsidiaries of Dealix. The transaction took place May 21, 2015 according to a press release by Autobytel. Autobytel is no stranger to premium generic domain names as they also own Car.com. From the press release: Dealix provides new and used car leads to dealerships, dealer groups, ... read more ...
 
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Report: Traffic to Alphabet.com Surges 5,000%; ABC.XYZ Gets 4 Million Visits in 2 Days - According to a story in the telegraph.co.uk today, traffic to Alphabet.com surged 5,000% since Google announcement on Monday. The Telegraph siting stats from Similar Web a “digital measurement service” says traffic to BMW owned Alphabet.com that saw “an average of 3,000 desktop visits” prior to Google announcement ” surged to almost 60,000 visits following Google’s announcement on Monday before spiking to around 163,000 on Tuesday. The story goes on to report that the domain name abc.xyz ... read more ...
Wed 12th August 2015
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Google Didn't Even Contact BMW To Offer To Buy Alphabet.com - According to a story today in the KansasCity.com, it seems that Google did not even contact BMW, that owns the domain name  Alphabet.com, to see if they would sell it before going with abc.xyz The article quotes a spokesman at BMW, who said “that the automaker was not informed ahead of time of plans by Page and Brin to create a company called Alphabet and had not received any offers to buy the Internet domain or the trademark”. Beyond BMW’s trademark issue with Google there are plenty of other ... read more ...
 
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Negari of .XYZ On Bloomberg TV On Dominance of .Com: "I Think It's Over" - Daniel Negari the CEO of the .XYZ registry was interviewed on Bloomberg Television today during the Bloomberg West show. .XYZ has been in the headline since Google announcement of the formation of its parent company Alphabet which would be using the domain name abc.xyz. The co-host of the Bloomberg West show asked the following question: There are now a Lot of choice for a domain name. We know that .Com is king,  how long will that last? Daniel: “I think its over” Negari went on to say .XYZ ... read more ...
 
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Domainer Merlin Kauffman's Soothe Startup Picks adult $10.6M In New Funding - Merlin Kauffman is a domain name investor and president of True Magic, LLC which owns many great domain names like Exclusive.com, Lookup.com, Conferences.com, FileSharing.com, Volunteers.com, and Tabloids.com to mention a few. Merlin is also the Founder and CEO of  Soothe which is an on-demand massage service which launched in April 2013. The company just picked up a cool $10.6 million in new funding according to a story on TechCrunch.com! As I began talking with massage therapists, they kept telling ... read more ...
 
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New gTLD .LOL Has Just 772 Domain Registrations After the 1st Day: Trump.lol; Obama.lol - .LOL launched into general availability yesterday by Uniregistry and wound with just 772 registrations including some 70 domain names registered in the Sunrise period by trademark holders. Uniregistry is charging $6.88 for a .LOL registration. Uniregistry beat out Google for rights to operate .LOL in a private auction. There are several domain names registered of people running for President of the United States as well as President Obama. Some comedians domains in .lol were registered as well, pretty ... read more ...
 
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.XYZ Sees Nearly 20K New Domain Registrations In 2 Days Since ABC.XYZ Announcement - Since Google Inc. announced Alphabet Inc. on August 10, 2015 around 3 PM ET and stated they will be using the domain name ABC.XYZ, the new gTLD .xyz has had nearly 20,000 new domain names registered! It started with over 6,000 .xyz domains being registered after Google’s announcement. New registrations for .xyz cranked that rising total up over double in one day with 13,000+ more domain name registrations! (13,206 to be exact) with a two day total of about 20,000 newly registered .xyz domain names. It ... read more ...
 
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$670.44 Per Click Advertising VS $10 Domain Name? 100 Most Expensive Keywords 2015 - WebpageFX.com did a nice infograph of the 100 most expensive cost per click advertising keywords in 2015 and they range from $670.44 down to $273.33. I have parked a fair amount of domain names in my life and never had a 3 figure click payout but I also do not have that many “legal” domain names and relating keywords but 78% of the 100 most expensive keywords are in the legal vertical according to the article. The article also states that “three out of every four people looking for attorneys ... read more ...
 
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BMW Has No Plans to Sell Alphabet.com - Seems like everyone is talking about domain names this week, the New York Times ran a story on Google and their new Alphabet brand. The story highlights concerns of other small businesses using Alphabet as a brand. They wonder how this will affect them, whether there would be legal action one contributor wondered aloud, “Who is going to sue Google ?” Of course there is a big company with an interest in this whole Alphabet naming deal. BMW owns the domain name Alphabet.com, they gave a statement ... read more ...
 
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Has .XYZ Forever Changed a Name Game ? - Lexi Pandell of Wired wrote a very interesting headline for a story on Google using ABC.xyz, “Thanks to Google’s Alphabet, .Xyz Will End .Com Dominance”  Lexi mentioned that she interviewed Daniel Negari earlier in the year and he gave his vision on .XYZ. “We end the alphabet in ‘xyz’ and we should end domain names the same way.” It turns out someone agrees with him. Yesterday, Google’s new holding company, Alphabet, revealed that it is making its online home at abc.xyz—a move ... read more ...
Tue 11th August 2015
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Best Headline For New gTLD's: "Thanks to Google’s Alphabet, .Xyz Will End .Com Dominance" - Wired.com just published a story which maybe the best headline ever for the new gTLD lovers and supporters: “Thanks to Google’s Alphabet, .XYZ Will End .Com Dominance” That as Taylor Swift would say is the best headline “like ever, ever” for a new gTLD Yeah Ponder on that one for a while. Ok I will give you a few. The rest of the story goes on to chat about Daniel Negari who sold his last name .com address Negari.com for $1,800 on Namejet just today and operates .XYZ. However the front ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1million led by GDL.com during $34,500 - Sedo had 454 transactions on their marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1m. 54% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.   Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: gdl.com at 34,500 USD Top ccTLD:  rabatt.ch at 19,100 EUR Top “other” TLD: jjy.net at 7,300 USD New Gtld sales this week: Solar.City 5,000 USD – RRR.one 2,500 EUR – Open.Bid 2,400 USD and Grace.Church 1,999 USD MadeBy.com was sold in 2010 for 3,500 USD and resold this week for 20,000 USD Lov.eu is an interesting ... read more ...
 
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BMW is Reviewing The Possibility of TM Infringement as associated Alphabet - BMW is apparently not too thrilled about Google deciding to go with the name Alphabet, and they have some concerns according to several news outlets. FleetNews.co.uk wrote: Vehicle leasing company Alphabet is investigating whether Google has infringed its trademark after the tech giant gave its new parent company the same name. Following a restructure, Google has created a new parent company called Alphabet Inc. The leasing and fleet management company, owned by BMW, told Fleet News: “The possibility ... read more ...
 
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Did Google Buy Alphabet.Xyz for $3,800 - GTLD.link is a forum that focuses solely on new gtlds. Last night at 8:28 a member posted he owned Alphabet.xyz and sold it. Sold too cheap So, I received a $2,500 Sedo offer last week for alphabet.xyz. I didn’t think much of the domain, so I countered with $3,800, and the buyer accepted.And then, this today: http://www.thedomains.com/2015/08/10…ame-is-abc-xyz Feeling very stupid right now. Could have easily sold for $15k. ... read more ...
 
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Google's Alphabet Inc. Announcement Fires Up .com / .net Registrations - As we noted earlier today over 6,000 .XYZ new gTLD domain names were registered yesterday,  after Google Inc. announced it’s holding company Alphabet Inc., using the domain name ABC.XYZ. It is interesting though, as Mike pointed out that of the 6,000 newly registered .xyz domains registered yesterday hundreds of them related to ABC, Alphabet and XYZ. I wanted to compare that to .com / .net domain registrations relating to those three terms. The “Alphabet” term ranked the highest, followed ... read more ...
 
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Sweet Art Company LLC Guilty of Reverse Domain Hijacking on Domain Registered in 1998 - Sweet Art Company LLC represented by Christopher M. DeBacker of Law Office of Mark Brown, LLC, Kansas was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on the domain sweetartinc.com which was registered in 1998. Sweet Art got a trademark in 2009. The one member panel of David E. Sorkin found: “In this case, it should have been obvious to Complainant that it could not prove that the disputed domain name was registered in bad faith. Even the allegations of bad faith in the Complaint relate ... read more ...
 
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SharkTank.com Saved in UDRP: No Reverse Hijacking Despite Domain Reg 6 Yrs Before TM - Sony Pictures Television Inc. just its attempt to grab the domain name SharkTank.com which was registered in 2002, while the trademark was not filed for until 2008 and not granted until 2009. However the Panel took a long way around and some interesting language to avoid finding Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Here are the highlights of the three member UDRP panel of Alan L. Limbury, Sandra J. Franklin, and Paul M. DeCicco “The two terms comprising SHARK TANK are generic and taken together, descriptive. ... read more ...
 
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Over 6K .XYZ Registered Yesterday Including 100's With ABC, Google, Alphabet Knockoff's - The .XYZ registry got thrown into the world stage last night when Google announced the formation of a new parent company, Alphabet which would be using the domain name abc.xyz. The new gTLD .XYZ got over 6,000 domain name registrations yesterday including hundreds which played off either the “ABC” theme, or Google and/or off the word Alphabet, includin; abcgoogle.xyz alphabetgoogle.xyz alphabetgroup.xyz Alphabetco.xyz Alphabetholdings.xyz abcdefghijkimnopqrstuvw.xyz Alphabetinc.xyz Getabc.xyz Alfabeto.xyz ... read more ...
 
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Twitter Files 3 New Trademarks: TWTR, N Logo And Niche Creator - Twitter Inc. has filed 3 new trademarks including one for TWTR which is the NYSE stock symbol for the company. The trademark states: “Providing business and corporate information via a web site and via social media”. Twitter Inc. currently does not own the matching domain name TWTR.com according to whois records. The domain name is for sale currently on domain name marketplace Sedo.com, with a “make offer” listing that is pretty active as seen in the screen shot below: The domain name is ... read more ...
Mon 10th August 2015
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Meet Google New Parent's Company Alphabet Whose Domain Name is ABC.XYZ - Google announced today on its company’s blog,  its forming a new parent company to see all of its businesses calling it Alphabet. The domain name of the holding company is not going to be Alphabet.com but the new gTLD abc.xyz. “What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google” “Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of ... read more ...