
Yahoo to auction over 100 domain names ranging from $1,000 to $1.5 million - bjansn
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/11/13/yahoo-announces-week-long-auction-100-premium-domain-names-ranging-1000-1-5-million/
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leokun
> The company has simply decided it wants a quick revenue bump as these
> domains have likely hit their peak in value.

This is a ridiculous observation given that Yahoo has revenue in billions of
USD, and no, selling domains for thousands of dollars will not be any kind of
meaningful "quick revenue bump." Tech reporting at its finest right here.

~~~
elob36
Did you not read the last paragraph?

> For a company that sees quarterly revenues of over a billion dollars, that’s
> not a big deal, but it definitely can’t hurt either.

Reading comprehension at its finest right here.

~~~
jimueller
The statement is presented as a fact in the article, yet as even the author
admits it is probably not true. So I would agree it is amateur journalism.

~~~
jonnathanson
Tying the sale of these domains to Yahoo's quarterly revenues -- even bringing
them up in the same sentence -- is the wrong context in which to discuss them
in the first place. Even if Yahoo raises a million dollars from this sale,
it'll have no material impact on the bottom line.

That said, there are other factors at play in a move like this: 1) PR value
(it got the attention of the tech press, after all); 2) the sale of
nonproductive assets for any sum greater than $0 isn't necessarily a bad
thing. Even if it has no measurable effect on the quarterly results.

If I own a broken appliance that I lack the time, financial interest, or skill
to fix -- but I can sell it to someone who _can_ make use of it for a few
bucks -- I might as well sell it. It won't make a dent in my yearly income,
but it'll be better than holding onto the useless (to me) asset.

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aw3c2
Direct link to the list of known domains for the fellow "enable javascript to
see our content"-boycotters out there: [http://cdn3.tnwcdn.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/11/...](http://cdn3.tnwcdn.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/11/yahoo_domains.png)

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smackfu
A lot of them are good old (noun).com. Those seem valuable at first, but is
that still the case? It used to be that people would build a brand around
something like pets.com, but now it seems much more popular to create a brand
name that is more identifiable and trademarkable.

~~~
jonnathanson
Back in the day, before people understood how the web worked (or was going to
work), those people generally assumed that recognizable nouns would (somehow)
correlate to higher organic traffic -- as if someone looking to buy pet-
related items would think to type "pets.com" into his URL field.

Search engines rendered that logic laughably naive, but I still think there
could be some ancillary value in (noun).com as a recognizable and easily
recalled domain name. I wouldn't overpay for one, but I wouldn't pass one up
if the pricing made sense, and if I had actual plans to do something
productive and value-adding with the name. (Buying domain names to squat and
flip, under the "Greater Fool Theory," is a game I wouldn't recommend
playing.)

On the other hand, the biggest non-technical challenge with buying a generic
noun as a domain name is trademarking. Picking too generic a company name is
setting oneself up for an uphill battle in today's trademark landscape.

~~~
DanielStraight
Right, so sled.com is probably pretty good, but webserver.com is probably
useless. Sled could easily be the name of an app (totally unrelated to
sledding of course), but Web Server can't be anything because it's too
technical to be useful for anything not related to web servers and too general
to be useful for anything that actually is related to web servers.

~~~
jonnathanson
Agreed. The value of something hyper-specific and enterprise-sounding
(webserver.com) is dubious at best. In the B2B sales and service business,
having a generic domain name doesn't carry much upside, and what little
measurable upside it does confer will be outweighed by downsides (such as the
difficult registration and enforceability of the trademark).

Apropos of nothing, a domain like truestory.com is an interesting tossup. At
the expected going rate of $25k+, it doesn't appear to make a lot of sense.
But if someone were going to buy this name and develop it as a blogging or
magazine format, I could see some value (again, barring trademark
difficulties). As a writer and aspiring publisher, I'd scoop up this domain if
it were priced within reason: say, the $1k-$5k range, tops. As a businessman,
I'm a little gun-shy about the price tag.

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huskyr
Ah, av.com. The good old redirect to altavista.com. I wonder how much they
payed for that back in the days...

~~~
brianbreslin
That was exactly my thought. Well is there anything left of the old altavista?

~~~
vidarh
There's the way the exclamation mark in the Yahoo! logo at altavista.com
temporarily morphs into a mountain....

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jlas
Here are some that caught my eye:

• webserver.com (250k-500k) • finalcountdown.com (10k-25k) • sandwich.com
(50k-100k) • airtrafficcontrol.com (10k-25k)

I imagine sandwich.com might be a good asset for a chain sandwich restaurant
(subway or quiznos, perhaps).

~~~
jliptzin
Maybe in 1999...but who actually types [thing I'm interest in].com into a web
address bar these days? Even my grandma knows better than that by now.

~~~
truncate
Its not about typing. Its about cool name I guess. Everyone loves and remember
a cool name. When you remember things, you communicate that easily and more
often. Good for marketing I suppose

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jonnathanson
I really hope the producers of _Arrested Development_ buy finalcountdown.com

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winterchil
Seems more likely that Yahoo is preparing to take a write-down on a collection
of assets and is trying to mitigate the total amount by auctioning off the
leftovers.

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jliptzin
I guess they're still holding on to broadcast.com. $5 billion for a 301 to
yahoo.com, maybe they're waiting for the right buyer.

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officemonkey
Webcal.com for $5000? That seems way too cheap.

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minikites
This article reminded me how mammals.org would redirect to Apple. I just
tested it and it doesn't work any longer. :(

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staunch
Mostly significantly over valued. They will draw attention though so maybe
they'll get high prices.

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chatman
Yahoo is cleaning up the house before vacating it and relocating elsewhere.
This is just a garage sale.

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pajju
Fellow HN'ers,

I had purchased a domain which I'm planning to Sell now. (iAppleService.com)

I'm totally new to this Domain Selling business.

\- How do you guys proceed to find the Right buyer? Can someone share their
experience. Looking for help.

~~~
aw3c2
That looks like a prime candidate for a lawsuit over Apple's trademarks.

~~~
pajju
Thanks. is it so?

Apple's service is very poor here in India. They just don't care for second
world countries. And I had purchased this for that reason. I like to give it
away, if goes for a good cause.

~~~
IBM
Apple's service is poor in India because they are required by law to partner
with Indian retailers to sell their products. These restrictions might be
lifting though, I recently read that Wal-Mart would have a retail presence in
India.

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theboss
I wonder how much legacy code can be pushed malware using one of these.

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richardlblair
Honestly, I think this is great. Let these solid domains get used.

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gdilla
jumpcut was an amazing tool. I wish they didn't deadpool it.

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nfoz
Why buy westerns.com when you could buy .westerns instead?

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spada
surprised not to see broadcast.com on there.

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betadreamer
truestory.com sounds cool

~~~
hcho
truestorybro.com sounds more complete

