Domain Sales

A Swedish government agency, the Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och Beredskap (MSB), has purchased the domain MSB.se for 950,000 SEK ($141,550 USD). The ccTLD’s sale is the second-highest ever on the .se extension. The number-one name is Spel.se, which garnered a price of $264,442 USD– almost double MSB.se’s cost. While Sweden …

It’s become common for DNS providers to redirect users to third-party pages upon entering an incorrect URL. Called NXDOMAIN substitution, many ISPs practice this to make money. ICANN is calling out against this practice, however, citing its harmful effects: If an email is accidentally sent to an incorrect domain and …

Afilias has announced the winners of its new .INFO Awards. Coming in first place is thueringen.info, a travel portal for the Thuringia region of Germany. The owner of the site won a cash prize of $7,500. In second place is GPS-Tour.info and in third is Turkel.info. Each site won $5,000 …

Single-character domain e.biz has sold at auction for €39,764 ($66,001 USD). While this looks like a lot at first, when compared to similar past sales, one sees how weak the .biz extension is on the market. In 2000, for instance, Biz.com sold for $625,000 USD. Despite an increase in average …

The Digital Economy Bill, currently in Parliament, could have major implications on the domain industry. It contains a broad clause that, if approved, will give the government the right to nationalize any failing domain registry based in the UK. Some domainers are crying foul over this, but in my opinion, …

Most netizens are familar with I Can Has Cheezburger, a blog that posts hilarious and adorable photos of cats with witty captions to match. A new site, ICANN Has Cheezburger, takes a punch at the latter site as well as the Internet organization ICANN. Whereas the original site posts cats, …

DotAsia has announced that it will be ready to accept IDN registrations on the .asia TLD in the second half of 2010. Because of the diverse nature of Asia’s languages and the wide variety of characters each uses, .asia will benefit immensely from IDN technology. Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia, …

Whiskey.com sold at a recent domain auction event for a whopping £110,073 ($185,000 USD). Though it is one of the biggest sales of the year, the buyer’s identity has not been made public. One disadvantage of Whiskey.com is that the word “whiskey” can alternatively be spelled “whisky.” The form used …

A company by the name of VisiBone has released a rather unique world map. Besides listing the obvious– major cities, oceans, and mountain ranges– it also displays each country’s ccTLD next to its name. On the sides of the map is a chart listing the same information as well as …

Given the large number of domain extensions out there, it’s nearly impossible for companies to register a domain on each one for all their products. This explains why Apple recently filed a dispute over the name itunes.com.mx, which had been registered several years earlier by a cybersquatter. Naturally, Apple won …