I just read an Associated Press report on Bloomberg that said publicly traded Answers.com (ANSW on Nasdaq) has agreed to be acquired by Summit Partners (a private equity firm) for about $127 million. For those who are unaware, Answers.com is a search engine of sorts that people can type in questions in search of answers.
Of course this isn’t a “domain” deal since the acquisition is for a revenue generating company that was built on the generic domain name. However, from my perspective, it’s fantastic to see a deal like this involving a descriptive domain name. When you think of the Answers.com domain name, your immediate thought would be that it’s going to be a site that provides answers, which it does.
There are many domain investors that own domain names that are just as intuitive (if not more so) than Answers.com. IMO, we are going to some big deals involving domain investor-held domain names in the next few years that will rival this deal. Perhaps domain investors won’t be building these businesses on their own, but I can see some taking equity stakes with other companies that use their domain names.
It goes to show that if you build a good business on a really good generic domain name, this tends to be the result.
Deal is going to be very nice… Answers.com might have earning $x,xxx,xxx using adsense…
I had a thought one day that Google may rise voice for answers.com aquisation. Google.answers.com is also my favorite.