According to a recent Whois update tracked by the DomainTools Registrant Monitor, Google has acquired the Streams.com domain name. Prior to this most recent Whois change, the domain name had been registered to DNStination Inc., the privacy proxy service operated by MarkMonitor.
If you are watching the men’s NCAA basketball tournament (aka March Madness), you may have spotted a Google Cloud television commercial that highlights the company’s G.CO domain name. MarkMonitor VP Statton Hammock took a photo of his television to catch the tail end of Google’s television spot with the url:
Nice domain https://t.co/TRp6GTMYL7 @Google @NeustarTLDs Where is .basketball? #domains pic.twitter.com/QzlynyNaYP
— Statton Hammock (@StattonHammock) March 22, 2019
This week, Google announced a new gaming platform called Stadia. As I observed shortly after the news was announced, Google smartly acquired the brand match Stadia.com domain name in advance of the announcement. I did not notice other Stadia-related domain names registered by Google at the time I wrote my article, but the company appears to have registered many domain names in ccTLD and new gTLD extensions in the hours and days since. Ten of the Stadia domain names registered by Google (via DNStination Inc.) include:
I saw a tweet from Techmeme with news about Google’s new game stream service called Stadia, which made me wonder if Google had acquired the brand match Stadia.com domain name in advance of the news:
Google announces Stadia, its game streaming service for Chrome, Android, and TVs (@technacity / 9to5Google)https://t.co/XqPOcyX4M1https://t.co/ruE3t1zCqc
— Techmeme (@Techmeme) March 19, 2019
According to nTLDStats.com, it looks like there are now more than 100,000 .Dev domain names registered. I can see more than 102,000 .Dev domain names in the zone file, and the number continues to grow.
The .Dev domain name extension is managed by Google, and .Dev domain names became available to register via the early access program on February 19. Since general availability phase began on February 28, the number of registrations has grown strongly. From what I can tell, it looks like there were about 5,000 domain names registered via the EAP, and in the last week and a half, over 95,000 domain names have been registered.
Google has privately (and quietly) acquired the Loon.com domain name. A current Whois record shows the domain name is now publicly registered to Google at MarkMonitor. The acquisition was reported by Jamie Zoch of DotWeekly, in a Twitter post earlier today:
Google acquires ultra premium #domain name Loon(.)com from long time owners Loon Systems for undisclosed amount. This is very likely for Project Loon, which is currently using Loon(.)co. Amazing domain, lots of $$! #google #loon #internet #asset pic.twitter.com/vnLkRRvhc8
— Jamie Zoch (@yofie) January 30, 2019
