Time Warner Rebranding as Warner Media Without Matching Domain

AT&T and Time Warner are merging, and the result is a rebranding of Time Warner. According to NBCNews.com, Time Warner will be rebranded as Warner Media:

“WarnerMedia is the new name for Time Warner, according to an internal memo from the AT&T executive who is taking charge of the media company, John Stankey.

The telecom firm said that customer confusion with Time Warner Cable, long since spun off from the company, was the reason for the change.”

From what I can see, it looks like this rebranding effort is being made without the matching WarnerMedia.com domain name. Instead, the company is using WarnerMediaGroup.com for its website.

Whois records for WarnerMedia.com, which are redacted due to GDPR, show the domain name was created in December of 1998. Using DomainTools’ Whois History tool, I can see that the domain name has been registered to a Pennsylvania entity called WarnerMedia since at least 2001 (the oldest historical record at DomainTools). From what I can see, Warner is the last name of the registrant contact.

It appears the domain name could be available for sale if the rebranded company would like to buy it. On the WarnerMedia.com landing page, there is a message that says, “The warnermedia.com domain is available for license or purchase. Select offers will be considered.” Here’s how the landing page currently looks:

IHOP Got IHOB.com for Burger “Rebrand” (Update)

IHOP sort of went viral last week when they announced they would be rebranding as IHOB. IHOP stands for International House of Pancakes, and the company teased the IHOB rebranding a bit, promising to make the big reveal about the “B” today. Well, the company announced that the B apparently stands for Burgers and the chain is now known as International House of Burgers:

I’m not really an IHOP person, but I guess if I was in the mood for some fast(ish) food pancakes and eggs, that would be the place I would probably type into Google Maps to find (no Waffle House around here). I don’t really understand the

GoDaddy Logo Gets an Update

If you visit GoDaddy regularly, you likely noticed a small but relatively major change to the GoDaddy logo. The caricature of a man with orange hair (the GoDaddy Guy as some people have called him) has been removed and the GoDaddy typeface is now green. The .com extension is not shown in the logo either, although that change was made several years ago. From what I can tell, the logo update was made sometime in the last week or so.

The company has been making significant graphic and typeface updates during the last year or so to align with its overall branding update. Regular users have noticed gradual changes throughout the website – from product and service pages to GoDaddy Auctions to the user control panel.

Here’s a look at the evolution of GoDaddy’s header logos over the years since 2005 (the actual logo may have been slightly different than what was shown in the header):

McHale Performance Upgrades to McHale.com via GoDaddy Auctions

GoDaddy Auctions, NameJet, and DropCatch.com are domain name expiry auction platforms that primarily cater to domain investors. These platforms are all open to the public, but I would imagine the vast majority of participants are investors seeking to buy domain names at wholesale prices.

When a domain name expires, most domain registrars place an expiry notice on the top of the landing page to inform visitors of the expired status. The notices typically contain a link to the auction for the domain name should it not be renewed by the registrant in time. These notices can be helpful to companies who may wish to purchase a domain name at auction once it goes through the expiry cycle.

Josh Schoen recently noticed an end user company bought a domain name via GoDaddy Auctions. Via Twitter, Josh mentioned that a company called McHale Performance bought McHale.com at auction for $10,000 (confirmed via NameBio) in early April:

Prior to winning the auction, the company had been using McHale.org and McHalePerformance.com. Both of these are fine domain names and probably served the company well, but

Some Interesting Coinbase Domain Registrations

In my daily DomainTools email, I noticed some interesting Coinbase-related domain name registrations. These domain names were registered via the DNStination privacy proxy service operated by MarkMonitor. Coinbase, Inc. uses Mark Monitor for its Coinbase.com domain name registration, so it seems highly likely that the company registered these domain names as opposed to a third party.

Some of the more interesting domain name registrations I noticed:

Steve Jurvetson Launches Firm on Future.Ventures

Steve Jurvetson is a well-known venture capitalist and was a co-founder of the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). Apparently, Jurvetson left DFJ last year, and Recode is reporting that he is starting a new firm called Future Ventures. Interestingly, the company is using the new gTLD domain name, Future.Ventures for its website.

The Future Ventures brand name sounded familiar to me because the exact match .com domain name, FutureVentures.com, was sold on NameJet about 2.5 months ago. I liked the name enough to bid $777 for it, but FutureVentures.com ended up selling for $1,009. There were 37 bidders who participated in the expiry auction.

When I did a Whois search for the domain name, the Registrar Status is listed