.CO

I use DomainTools to track the domain name acquisitions of several major companies. I find it interesting to see what these companies are either buying in the aftermarket or hand registering, and I also think these acquisitions can provide insight for my business or become fodder for an article on this blog.

As you might expect, Apple makes quite a bit of domain name purchases. Most of the domain names I track are brand-related domain names. Many seem to be of a defensive nature. For instance, Apple is buying quite a few new gTLD domain names and ccTLD domain names related to products and other trademarks. For the most part, it doesn’t seem like Apple is using many of these domain names (for instance, you can see AppleNews.Taipei and MacbookPro.online aren’t resolving).

One domain name that is

In September of 2013, a luxury yacht company announced that it had acquired the single letter Y.CO domain name from the .CO Registry. The firm had previously used ycoyacht.com for its url. The acquisition price Y.CO paid remains private.

This morning, Ben Roberts of SuperYachts.com published an article about Y.CO and the launch of its website. In the article, Roberts discussed the Y.CO domain name that the company acquired and how it helps position the company:

Five years ago today, .CO domain names became available for people around the world to register. Neustar, the parent company of the .CO Registry, is celebrating the 5th birthday of the .CO Registry today. In honor of this occasion, the company published a detailed press release along with three infographics that share some great information about .CO domain names.

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the celebration is that Neustar and the .CO Registry aren’t simply touting the accomplishments of the Registry in the press release. The focus of the news is  more geared towards the accolades of companies using .CO domain names. The .CO Registry has worked very hard to create a community amongst its registrants, and celebrating its registrants rather than itself on this anniversary is not surprising to me.

Some interesting facts shared in the press release and three accompanying infographics include:

At the last update, there were well over 1 million .CO domain names registered. I think there are quite a few .CO domain names still in the hands of people in the domain investment space, and I want to share a tweet that I saw for a company looking for a .CO domain name for a business.

We're looking for a catchy #dotco name for our new webstore. Any suggestions? We sell pro audio, lighting, sound, cameras, etc #techboom.co?

— John Fiorello (@JohnFiorello) March 18, 2015

The buyer’s budget was not posted in the tweet, so I don’t know what the company is looking to spend on a domain name. The ask is fairly vague, but the company is looking for something for a store that sells audio, lighting, sound, and other similar types of equipment.

Based on the number of .CO domain names I see listed for sale, I would bet someone owns a domain name that might be of interest. If you have something, you may want to send him a tweet with a submission.

Good luck!

Over the weekend, CNN published an article written by Loy Okezie that covered  10 African startups that rocked 2014. In the opinion of the author, the ten companies that were profiled “are 10 of the most exciting young companies of the year.”  From a domain name perspective, the most interesting aspect of the article to me is that 4 of the 10 startups that were profiled use  .CO domain names  for their websites. Additionally, 6 of the 10 companies do not use .com domain names for their websites.

Here is a list of the 10 startups that were profiled in this article, as well as the domain names they are using: