Yesterday, I mentioned the Google I/O session about .App domain names. Google is the operator of the .App registry, and the company is holding a session at its developer conference to discuss its newly released .App domain names. The session takes place today at 4pm PDT (7pm EDT).
Heres a livestream of stage 6:
Google will host its annual developer conference, I/O, from May 8th – 10th in Mountain View, California. Domain names do not generally play any role in the I/O developer conference, but Google is going to be giving some attention to a new extension in one of the sessions.
On May 8th (tomorrow) from 4pm – 5pm, Google will be hosting a session called Introducing .app domain names, and how to secure them. The event will be hosted by Google employees Ben McIlwain and Adrienne Porter Felt. Here’s how the session is described:
“.app, the web’s first secure-only open top-level domain (TLD) for mobile apps and developers, is launching on May 8. This in-depth technical talk covers use cases for .app domain names, HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), best practices for secure website development, and the unique security benefits of .app domains thanks to TLD-wide HSTS.”
As you may know,
The Kentucky Derby was held earlier today, and the winner was a horse name Justify. Another horse that ran in today’s race was Audible, a racehorse named after a football term called an “audible.”
Because of Amazon’s ownership of the audiobook service called Audible, both Amazon and Audible have been cheering on the racehorse with the same name. One way the company is rooting on Audible the horse is with one of its new gTLD domain names: Audible.Horse.
When you visit Audible.Horse, you are redirected to a landing page within Audible.com that shows the company’s support for the horse:
A couple of years ago, the .XYZ registry had a special promotion where unregistered .XYZ domain names could be registered for $.01 for the first year. I remember thinking (and writing) about registering a huge swath of them with the hopes of selling just a couple to break even and make a profit. I did not do this, but Darryl Lopes did and shared his story on NamePros today.
Unfortunately for Darryl, a year went by and he did not sell a single domain name, despite having a $300 buy it now asking price for each name. He said he received a couple of inquiries, but neither produced a sale for him:
“I mean I did pay around $200 for all 20,000 domain names so I really just wanted to sell one and make a profit. That never happened, almost a year went by and I had to make sure all the .xyz were on auto renew off as the renewal price for around $12.88 USD each, I knew this going into this and a few clicks and sorting out bulk domain edits I was going to let them all lapse.”
On one hand, Daryl lost a couple hundred dollars and a couple of days of effort. On the other hand, Darryl seems to have avoided any legal consequences such as a UDRP or URS that could have lived on and impacted his business for a long time. He was also able to say he gave this a try, and I applaud his effort and his sharing. I am sure there were quite a few people who did what Darryl did, and I don’t recall seeing anyone else share their results.
There are a couple of takeaways from this.
Donuts reported that it sold the Vacation.Rentals domain name for $500,300 in an all-cash deal. This sale was reportedly the largest new gTLD domain name sale to date. It was the second reported $500,000+ sale of a new gTLD domain name reported by Donuts this year.
Earlier today, I was alerted via Twitter and email that the buyer of Vacation.Rentals, Mike Kugler, did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the AMAFeed.com platform. In the AMA, there were quite a few questions posed about the domain name and the acquisition of the domain name.
Here are some of the more relevant domain name related questions that were posed:
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
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