Google Announces Dandelion, Which Uses Dandelion.CO

Google’s parent company Alphabet runs a division called X. For X, the “mission is to invent and launch “moonshot” technologies that we hope could someday make the world a radically better place.”  In an announcement made on its X.company blog, the launch of Dandelion was announced. According to the blog post, “Dandelion will offer geothermal heating and cooling systems to homeowners, starting in the northeastern United States.”

From a domain name perspective, the announcement is interesting. Dandelion is using the Dandelion.CO domain name instead of a .com domain name. Dandelion.com is registered to someone in New York City, and it is unrelated to X’s Dandelion.

NameBio shows that Dandelion.CO last sold in 2013

3 Great Domain Names That Were Owned by Jeff Bezos

I saw a neat article on Reader’s Digest that discussed a few of the domain names that were originally registered by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. The article discussed how Bezos almost called Amazon “Relentless” and he bought the matching domain name, Relentless.com. According to the article, Bezos also considered using Awake.com and Browse.com.

As you might expect, the domain names mentioned in the Reader’s Digest article are all currently owned by Amazon. I did a Whois History search at DomainTools, and it looks like those domain names have been registered to Amazon for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, this means that people can’t find Mr. Bezos’ personal email address, which may have been possible had ownership records gone back further.

I think we can all agree that the Amazon branding has

CNBC Article Illustrates Positive Aspect of Dictionary .com

Mike Berkens shared a link to a CNBC article on Twitter about a company called Blockchain that just raised $40 million in funding. I think the article is a good illustration about why it is important for a business that uses a descriptive brand name to operate on the exact match  .com domain name.

While reading the article on my iPhone, I noticed that there was no url for the startup referenced or embedded. I know the company is called Blockchain, and I also know they are in the blockchain / cryptocurrency business. There are quite a few companies with Blockchain in their branding.

I (correctly) assumed the company operates on Blockchain.com, so I was easily able to navigate to the website to learn more about them. This is the positive aspect of a

Squeeze Upgrades to Squeeze.com

SqueezeYesterday morning, I noticed a Whois registrant change for the valuable Squeeze.com domain name. Because the domain name had been owned by Future Media Architects, I reached out to Uniregistry’s Vice President of Sales Jeff Gabriel, as Uniregistry typically acts as the domain broker on behalf of FMA. Unfortunately, Jeff could not provide details about the sale, but I believe Uniregistry was the broker.

When I visited Squeeze.com yesterday and clicked on the “Learn more” link, I was taken to a page within the SqueezeApp.com website. The company refers to itself simply as Squeeze throughout its website, so the acquisition of Squeeze.com represents a huge domain name upgrade. According to its Twitter profile, Squeeze is a FinTech app, and the website says it will be launching this Summer.

I reached out to Elias Janetis, CEO of Squeeze, to ask him about the acquisition. Although he couldn’t tell me the exact purchase price of the domain name, he did tell me that he

Live With Kelly & Ryan Domain Registered A Year Ago

For many years, there was a morning talk show called Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee. When Kathie Lee left the show, Kelly Ripa became Regis Philbin’s co-host, and the show’s name was changed to Live! with Regis and Kelly. After Regis retired, Kelly’s co-host became former NFL player Michael Strahan, and the show was called Live! with Kelly and Michael. Last year, Michael Strahan left the show, and a variety of people have filled in as co-host for short periods of time.

For quite some time, there had been some speculation about who would be  Kelly Ripa’s new permanent co-host. The speculation played out a bit on social media over the last few days as it seemed like there was an announcement coming soon:

One of the headlines in the news today is that the new co-host of the Live! show has been selected. The new co-host is

Additional Thoughts About the Closing of Quidsi

On Wednesday,  we learned that Amazon would  be sunsetting Quidsi brands, including Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com and others. Recode, Wall St. Journal, and CNBC  published articles sharing this news. I was an infrequent  customer of Diapers.com, and  I was a fan of the company’s usage of exact match domain names for its brands.

In my article last week, I shared a few thoughts on the news, and I thought I would share some  additional thoughts today. You are welcome to give your insight about the news. I am also interested in hearing your ideas about how Amazon will use Quidsi’s great exact match domain names, which hold considerable  value.

5 Thoughts about Amazon shutting Quidsi: