In my morning DomainTools Registrant Monitor alert email I received yesterday morning, I saw a few domain name registrations from Amazon that caught my attention. The domain names that Amazon recently registered are related to business relief and small business relief. My guess is that the domain name registrations are related to an Amazon program created to help small business owners whose businesses are impacted by the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
Several days ago, Amazon’s blog announced a program to assist local small business owners. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Today, we’re creating a $5 million Neighborhood Small Business Relief Fund to provide cash grants to local small businesses that need assistance during this difficult time. The fund is intended for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees or less than $7 million in annual revenue, physical presence within a few blocks of our Regrade and South Lake Union office buildings, that are open to the general public, and that are reliant on foot-traffic for customers. Among the information that will be requested as part of the grant process will be how much revenue each applicant anticipates it’ll lose in March with some associated back-up information.
Small businesses within the South Lake Union and Regrade neighborhoods as well as the ones adjacent to the buildings we occupy in Bellevue will be eligible to apply for grants so they can continue to retain and pay their employees, stay current on rent, and cover other fixed costs related to their operations. We will be working with a third-party to administer grant applications and distribute funds. The plan is for applications to be reviewed during the second half of March and funds to be disbursed in April. Please refer back to this page for updates.”
The domain names I can see that Amazon registered include:
- AMZSmalBizFund.com
- AMZSmallBizFund.com
- AMZSmallBusinessFund.com
- BizReliefFund.com
- BusinessReliefFund.com
- SmallBizReliefFund.com
- SmallBusinessReleifFund.com
- SmallBusinessReliefund.com
There are probably more domain names that Amazon registered related to a business relief fund or small business relief fund that were not included in the Registrant Monitor alert email.
At the time of publication, these domain names forward to a blank page within the Force.com (Salesforce) website. It remains to be seen if these domain names were registered in relation to the small business relief fund Amazon previously announced or if the company is planning something bigger to help more businesses that are going to face significant pressure in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. I will keep my eye on these domain names to see how Amazon uses them.
