Telecommunications giants T-Mobile and Orange recently announced a merger, and instead of leveraging either company’s hard earned name recognition by taking the brand name of one company (or merging the two brands), the company opted to completely re-brand as a company called Everything Everywhere.
Up until April 29, 2010, the matching EverythingEverywhere.com domain name was owned by a London-based design firm, Ted Kelly Design. Just a week ago on May 4, 2010, the domain name was transferred to the ownership of Melbourne IT, and the new website indicates that the newly formed entity has acquired it. Interestingly, EverythingEverywhere.co.uk was previously registered in August of 2009 and is registered to the same entity as the .com.
Although the terms of the domain sale don’t seem to be public (at least not yet), I have an email in to the former owner seeking comment. If/when I hear back, I will update this post. It would be interesting to know the purchase price, as the domain name is wouldn’t be considered a prime generic domain name, but the company was probably under quite a bit of pressure to acquire the name immediately, as once the merger became public knowledge, the acquisition price would presumably increase dramatically.
With a combined 30 million customers across the world, owning the .com is critical.
