100,000 Domains Sold for $164 Million

miller60 writes "Here's a news item that puts some hard data on the domain typo millionaires post from a couple weeks back. Marchex Inc. just paid $164 million to buy Name Development Ltd., an obscure company that displays pay-per-click keyword ads on 100,000 domains. It's not a stock swap, either, as $155 million of that was in cash. The seller reportedly built the portfolio by scarfing up expiring domains (including hardware-update.com, previously owned by Microsoft and linked from within the Windows 2000 OS) and replacing the content with pay-per-click ads."

Comments

Re:Price not surprising at all.

[bigtallmofo]

Sorry to reply to myself... I just found the EBay auction site again:

Whatismyip.com Auction

The final price? $386,100.00.

So do all of these domains point to one subnet?

[caryw]

I work at an ISP. If all these domains point to the same class C or something I'll just block it at the router if it's purely advertising junk.
Anyone know details? Thanks.
- Cary
--Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

Not a new idea.

[radiotyler]

If it walks and barks like a dog, it's a dog, no matter what you call it.

Have you ever called 1-800-COL-LECT? Have you ever called 1-800-COL-MECT? Same thing. You get a "collect call long distance provider". Just not the one you wanted. Profiting off of other peoples' errors isn't exactly a new idea. This is just a variation on a theme.

On a funny note, I originally heard about this 800 number scheme while reading Jenna Jameson's autobiography, "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale". Her husband apparentally made quite a bit of money in the mistyped 800 number business.

Almost like store placement

[jfried]

I was told a story that McDonalds spends millions on strategic restraunt locations, where it would see the most traffic, and the condition of the neighborhood and all kinds of good statistics. what ever it takes to find the perfect store location.

Then burger king builds across the street.

How about a new Firefox extension

[thrillseeker]

Anyone out there got an itch to write a useful extension for Firefox? One that catches any domain name that leechers (yes, they are leechers - they are capitalizing on someone's mistake, not their intent) use to take unfair advantage, and redirects it to the intended site. It'd need an easy "on/off" button so that you could visit the crap sites if you wanted.

You'd be an internet hero.

Re:Aggghh the pain.

[StyroCupMan]

I don't mind if I happen to type in the wrong page and see a bunch of useless ads. What irks me is when I am trying to do a search and all it returns are links to those ad pages.