Categories
News

Biggest domain sale of 2011 nearing completion – Media Corp announces year-end results, Gambling.com update

gambling.com

Perhaps the biggest domain name sale of 2011, Media Corp’s gambling.com, is getting ready to make headlines. 

Just hours ago, Media Corp announced its final results for the year ended 2010 through a press release. 

While the company showed a better overall performance for its business than the previous year, and gross profit increased by 456%, what’s on the minds of many in the domain name and gaming industries, is what’s going on with the auction of gambling.com?

According to the press release, here’s what Media Corp had to say about gambling.com.

  • 2010 Business highlights– Removal of the Gambling.com Google penalty, Re-launch of Gambling.com website
  • Online Publishing–The business of the publishing division has continued to be challenging during the year. As announced post year end we are undertaking an auction for the sale of Gambling.com. There have been a number of bidders and the Directors anticipate the auction process to be nearing completion at which point an announcement will be made. The Board is also considering the sale of other underperforming publishing assets and this review will continue through 2011.
  • Current trading and prospects– The Directors are hopeful of a successful conclusion to the auction process for gambling.com which should strengthen the cash position and balance sheet of the Company and provide capital for further expansions.

Gambling.com, the auction process

Though it’s not 100% official, the sale of gambling.com will almost certainly be more than a pure domain sale.  A website has been established on the domain since 1997.  Gambling.com has even sold before in 2005, when Sedo brokered the blockbuster deal for $20MM

Media Corp put the domain gambling.com up for sale in November 2010, as it says, to fund acquisition opportunities following approaches from a number of online gaming companies.  In hopes of getting the best sales outcome, the company appointed Sedo, the World’s leading domain marketplace, to handle the sale.

Media Corp announced its first quarter 2011 results at the end of January, and indicated that a sale for gambling.com would complete during the second quarter of the financial year (which, it didn’t). 

However, expect a lot more news on an impending blockbuster deal in the very near future. 

One potential buyer, who had been rumored to be interested, is billionaire Calvin Ayre who acquired the domain name slots.com in 2010 for $5.5.

Categories
News

Amazon tablet to be called Scratchpad? Domain name registered [UPDATED]

Amazon Box

There have been lots of rumors of an Amazon Android tablet

TechCrunch has been speculating for months that Amazon could very well be working on their own device to compete in the tablet space.  Last week, Amazon’s Android App store launched, and shortly after, TechCrunch argued that Amazon needs to get cracking on its own tablet.

Well, things looks more promising for an Amazon tablet.

According to the latest domain registrations by Amazon’s Legal Department, the device may be called the “Amazon Scratchpad”.

Created on…………..: 2011-03-25
Expires on…………..: 2012-03-24.
Record last updated on..: 2011-03-25.

http://whois.domaintools.com/amazonscratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/amazonmwsscratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/mws-scratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/mwscratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/mwsscratchpad.com

News of these domain registrations hasn’t come out before now. 

Here’s a look a the Whois record for amazonscratchpad.com.

Amazon Scratchpad

[UPDATE Mar. 30th, 2011, 7:25PM EST: The original story above has set off a flurry of activity on major technology blogs and news sites.  Shortly after it went online a reader had already indicated “Scratchpad” was being used for Amazon’s Marketplace Web Service in the comments, but that didn’t stop a number of major sites running the story and crediting this site. 

Story credits included CNNMoney, The Next Web, and Business Insider (ran two stories).  SlashGear and Gizmodo also chimed in.]

[UPDATE 2 Mar. 29th, 2011, 9:41 PM EST:.  The Next Web writes, “The fact that these tools have been around for years and the inclusion of MWS in the name is a dead giveaway: if Amazon does release a tablet, it won’t be called the Scratchpad — unless their legal department has just pulled off a clever stunt in misdirection.”]

[UPDATE 1 Mar. 29th, 2011, 9:35 PM EST:.  Reader Brent Nau said in the comments, “Looking into this a bit, “MWS” refers to Amazon Marketplace Web Service. Looks like the reference to “scratchpad” is geared to a sandbox area to run tests against the API possibly”…]

Categories
Disputes News WIPO

Google Inc. files domain name dispute over Google TV typo — googletg.com

Google TV

Google Inc. has filed a complaint over the domain name googletg.com with WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization. 

The domain name appears to be a typo of Google’s own googletv.com, which re-directs to the Google TV home page located at http://google.com/tv.   According to Compete, a site that provides free information for every web address on the internet, the typo doesn’t even get enough traffic to be statistically relevant. 

A look at Whois records shows the name currently registered to a, xuyecheng

Over the years Google has filed dozens of cases at WIPO and won.  As far as back as 2000, Google won wwwgoogle.com, but the company also goes after its other brands like vietnamadwords.com which it won in 2010.

Googletv Domain Typos

A number of variations of googletv.com such as googletv.info and googletv.org are registered to Google, however, many of the typos are not. 

The Domain Typo Finder provided by DomainTools, gives a clue as to what has been registered by individuals or organizations other than Google.

Once you type in the url googletv, results show dozens of typos already registered, and in many cases, to the same registrant. 

For example, “Song Bin”, is the registrant for wwwgoogletv.com, gogletv.com, googetv.com, gooletv.com, and gooogletv.com.

Another possibility for the domain dispute, if not over a typo of googletv.com, is over it’s country domain google.tg, for the country of Togo.

Categories
News

Stradivarius.com sold: New owner pays 60,000 euros ($84,000+ USD) at Sedo

Stradivarius

A Stradivarius today can be worth worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars. 

In 2006 for example, a Stradivari Violin sold for a record $3.5 million at Christie’s N.Y.  The 1707 Stradivari violin known as “The Hammer” set a new auction record for a musical instrument of any kind, according to Bloomberg

Now today, Sedo GreatDomains is reporting the sale of the domain, stradivarius.com, for approximatley 60,000 euros.

While the sale of the domain name, stradivarius.com, won’t necessarily set any records, as of today, the sale lands itself in DN Journal’s Top 100 YTD sales for 2011, near the top-10 of the year. 

Notable instrument-domain sales

There have been other notable “instrument” domain name sales in the past.  In 2008, trumpet.com sold for $35,000 and Piano.net sold for $29,000. 

However, it’s guitar-related domain names that appear to fetch some of the highest prices on the aftermarket.  Ultimateguitar.com, which was purchased by the operators of ultimate-guitar.com, sold for over $100,000 in 2007.  In recent years, sales have included: electricguitars.com ($42,700.00), usedguitars.com ($35,000.00), bassguitar.com ($30,000.00), electricguitar.com ($25,000.00), and plenty more.

Buyer of Stradivarius.com

It’s unclear what will become of the domain name, stradivarius.com.  The new registrant shows as the owners of krescendo.it, according to DomainTools

KRESCENDO Multimedia, which operates the domain krescendo.it, is a web design company. 

Whether the domain will be used to brand the company as a signature of “excellence” for its services or whether the domain is being managed for a client, at the moment, the stradivarius.com website shows nothing more than an “Under Construction” page.

Categories
News Video Games

MilitaryGamer: After losing out on “Game of the Year”, Activision doesn’t renew domains: gameoftheyear.com [More]

Call of Duty Black Ops

Dotweekly Editor Jamie Zoch wrote an interesting article this week about spying on company domain names using DomainTools.  The story got me thinking about looking at the name servers of companies like Activision so I could post an article on my other blog, militarygamer.com.

I found something interesting, while doing some research on activision.com.  The company has let several of its domain names expire: gameoftheyear.com, thegameoftheyear.com, computergameoftheyear.com, pcgameoftheyear.com, and game-of-the-year.com.

As I pointed out on MilitaryGamer, gameoftheyear.com was first registered in 1999, and now the domain name appears over on the Pending Deletes List provided by Pool.com.  Thegameoftheyear.com is still registered to Activision, but the status of the domain is set to ”Redemption Period”, meaning the name has about 30 days before its released by the registrar and either available for public registration or sent to one of the drop-catching services like Pool.

Activision has yet to win a Spike VGA Game of the Year award. 

And while one has nothing to do with the other necessarily, had Activision won “Game of the Year”, renewing the domain probably wouldn’t have been overlooked.

According to a rough estimate provided by Compete, the domain gameoftheyear.com does receive a few hundred visitors per month in the latter part of the year.

A look at Archive.org, shows that gameoftheyear.com had a fully developed website online at one point, that was operated by Vivendi Universal Games, which eventually merged with Activision.

You can read more over at the MilitaryGamer blog post.

Anyone who wants to learn more tips and tricks, should pay a visit to DotWeekly.  Jamie Zoch the Editor, has been in the domain industry since 2004 and writes helpful guides on domain names.