At the NamesCon live domain name auction in February of 2019, Frank Schilling acquired DomainNames.com for $370,000. The domain name was sold in the auction by Network Solutions, and it has been forwarding to Uniregistry’s website since the purchase was completed.
As you know, GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry and Name Administration from Frank Schilling. After speaking with a company spokesperson, I was able to confirm that GoDaddy has acquired DomainNames.com as a part of the Uniregistry acquisition.
Unlike the bulk of Frank Schilling’s portfolio that were registered to Name Administration, DomainNames.com is registered to Uniregistry. I would imagine this is because the domain name was bought by Frank on behalf of Uniregistry rather than on behalf of his portfolio company, Name Administration.
GoDaddy would not comment to me about any future plans for the domain name. Ironically, think it could be difficult for GoDaddy to actually use the domain name. I can’t imagine the company would operate an independent brand on DomainNames.com.
If you were GoDaddy, how would you use DomainNames.com?
Hi Elliot, so the deal does not include names owned by Name Administration?
It does include those domain names, which are transferring to a new entity called NameFind Cayman Islands LTD:
https://domaininvesting.com/namefind-cayman-islands-ltd-registrant-of-uniregistry-domains/
If we look at the #OpenWeStand campaign, Godaddy seems big on partner marketing. The domain would be perfect for marketing across their “Keiretsu”.
The domain also seems like an obvious candidate for a site that teaches people how to invest in domain names. It could be their online university, similar to Epik’s DomainGraduate.com.
The logic there is that to grow, they need to make the market bigger, and to do that, they need to educate more people about the industry.
At the end of the day, I think Aman gets the “bottom of the pyramid” strategy, and see potential in emerging markets, so I would see them using it for that.
We shall see.
It would probably be a good idea to just launch DomainNames.com as one of its owned resellers such as DomainsPricedRight.com under its Wild West Domains program. It would be simple and seamless.
GoDaddy should use DomainNames.com domain name, but they probably won’t.
GoDaddy should sell the domain at a reasonable price to somebody else in the industry so they can use it to innovate rather than holding it for themselves.
Just forward it to godaddy homepage, and be done with it, spend resources on fixing domains manager, creating easier push system, domain leasing, enacting account balances.. etc like free advice to make a better platform, not hard to do???
Godaddy did lose their key engineer out of a Seattle who was probably the best person to patch that domain manager just recently also, whiz has to be a huge blow. Uni seems to be bleeding employees also to UNR, and SAW.
Godaddy has the traffic to achieve more great things, put the pieces together, and they will come.
Replace the damn f stupid Afternic name to DomainNames.com
Yeah, but they didn’t get ReallyGoodNames or ReallyGoodDomainNames,,,, heh.
Would just redirect it to the main site, it won’t bring them any real benefit.