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VeriSign Buys .tv
Mike Damm writes: "As everyone is so worried about Microsoft these days, another monopoly is slipping through the cracks. VeriSign has paid the country of Tuvalu $45 million in cash for The .TV Corporation, as stated by this press release. Same great service, different obscure TLD!"
You could've hired me.
...verisign loses $44.8 million dollars on the
I can't believe people are still dealing out big cash for lame TLDs, what is this, '98?
Didn't anyone tell Verisign that the dot com bubble burst? What? Do they expect to get $10 million a piece from NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CNN and run away with a $5 million profit? I don't get it. IIRC, domain speculation has pretty much gone bust too, and this seems to be that...
This is a HELL of a lot of money. In 1995, Tuvalu had only 10,000 people, meanin this averages out to $4500 a person. At a similar per-person rate, .us should go for around $1.35e12, which would just about take care of half the national debt. .cn could be bought for 10% of the world's entire GDP
for 2000.
Numbers are fun.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
According to the CIA world factbook it's a constitutional monarchy. Of 10,000 people. Which just quintupled it's GDP.
.tv domain names?
What I don't understand is how they can sell it twice; I thought they already sold it a while ago.
I'm not sure why Verisign would give that much. I mean, does anyone actually buy
From the small text at the bottom of the press release:
Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
Looks to me like it hasn't yet been approved by the SEC? I can't imagine they'd have a problem with it, but it's not really news until the deal is firm.
I'm a 2000 man.
I believe that one of the conditions that Tuvalu originally gave Verisign, Network Solutions, or whatever it was called back then, for the right to sell .tv names was that the Tuvalu govt would get some royalties to be put back towards developing Tuvalu's own Internet/IT infrastructure.
Is this $45 million a one time lump sum, and is so, does this mean that Tuvalu itself has completely given up ownership of its domain (so if a Tuvalu company wanted to register, they'd have to go through Verisign like everyone else?)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Tuvalu is a democracy. Queen Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch, represented by a governor general, who has mostly ceremonial power. Actual power is in an elected council and prime minister.
Tuvalu is also quite poor; a group of sandy islands with few natural resorces and little industry. The gov't gets much of its money from selling stamps and coins. And now, from selling its TLD for $45 million. Great deal for them, probably.
Can someone post the URL of a good .TV domain? I've been a web designer for the last 3 years and not one of our clients has requested a .TV domain, or have I visited a good web site ending in .TV. How is verisign going to possibly recoup 45 million when there isn't a strong market for them? For our clients its dot-com or rethink the company name.
Consider: Arable land, zero. Pastures, crops, zero. Changes in sea level, a major issue. If you could put saltwater in a car, the world would have beaten a path to their doorstep, but it's not and they haven't. This little purchase is a little over four times their listed GDP, for crying out loud. Me, I'm happy to see countries with very little else going for them in the high tech world be able to make a buck off of things like this.
Yes, for you "this is old news" jokers, the old Wired Magazine article is here.
Mike Hoye
I remember hearing ads for the .tv TLD around a year ago. They were saying something about how television was so much better than radio and how .com and .net names are like radio and .tv domains would revolutionize "the 'net" like the television revolutionized entertainment. Crap like "Why settle for a static, boring .com name when you can have a fully multimedia .tv name..." I couldn't believe people would buy that line of crap.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
The slashdot headline states that the island of Taluva recieved $45 million for the .TV corporation. However, I don't believe this to be correct. The island leased the rights to the .TV name to the .TV corporation. The original agreement was for a 50/50 profit split, if I recall. The corporation was owned by a Los Angeles based investment firm. It would seem that the corporation changed hands, but the $45 million would have gone to the invement firm, not to the island. The island would continues to recieve royalties under the original agreement. Perhaps someone could dig up links checking on this...
"There's a sucker born every minute" -- P. T. Barnum, I believe.
Sometimes I think the reason most smart people don't get rich selling, as you say, crap, to the dummies, is that most smart people can't imagine anyone that stupid. Sadly, such people exist. Frighteningly, they vote.
You could've hired me.
I remember the exact same article. The guy teamed up with them to get exclusive marketing and registration rights to the .tv TLD and he would share the profits with them. I never thought it would fly.
.fm .am out there Fromosia (sp?) and some other place.
There's still
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Read the press release more carefully.
e bi z.tuvalu/index.html
It does not say that VeriSign paid Tuvalu $45 million. It says that VeriSign paid $45 million for the ".tv Corporation International". This corporation is an idealab company:
http://www.idealab.com/companies/dottv.tp
Here's some information on what dot-tv (idealab) paid Tuvalu in order to get the rights to manage the ".tv" TLD:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/business/11/16/