On August 5th, I detected a change with the ABC.xyz domain name. I sent an email to .XYZ registry CEO Daniel Negari to ask if he could share anything since the domain name had previously been registered to his company, XYZ.com, LLC. The new registrant is DNStination Inc., and I thought they may have acquired the domain name on behalf of a big company. I did not hear back from Daniel.
This afternoon, I was at the gym when I heard a report about Google and a corporate change the company announced today. As I was cooling down, I instinctively did a Whois search for Alphabet.com. The domain name is registered to BMW, although I do not see a website resolving right now. I added it to my list of monitored domain names to see if Google would acquire it.
After returning from the gym, I was exchanging emails with Frank Schilling. Frank asked me if I heard about ABC.xyz. I had not, and I was very surprised when I visited the website. It looks like ABC.xyz is now home to the Google / Alphabet entity.
I checked out Google’s blog, and sure enough, there was an article about Alphabet and a link directly to ABC.xyz within the article. This was not a link shortener or a domain hack. It looks like Google is using ABC.xyz for its Alphabet website.
According to the blog post discussing the new entity, “Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google.” There is much more to the blog post, and I think it is worth a read. CNBC and other financial news outlets are currently discussing Alphabet and what the new company will do and how it will operate.
Now that ABC.xyz has officially launched, I reached back out to .XYZ’s Daniel Negari for a comment. If he has anything to share, I will be happy to add it.
This looks like a big win for .XYZ and possibly the entire new gTLD program.
It’s a win for Daniel Negari and selling one of the few domains that the .XYZ registry is good for; the alphabet. The other being abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw.xyz
I think Google summed it up by saying;[we make]”smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses”.
As this story unravels, I’m sure Mr.Negari will have a larger role to play within Alphabet; possibly even heading their .google extension when Google decides that we should all be using a .google and not a .COM.
Speculation for a speculative move.
Then why would Google decided not to use one of its own new TLDs? They have plenty to choose from…
Alphabet.com was up and running when I first read the news. It’s owned by BMW and had something to do with Fleet Management.
This definitely a big win.
It would be a monstrous win if they use it for a public facing website instead of a corporate identity website.
But this will definitely influence startups and other tech companies to seriously consider new gTLDs!
Huge win for .xyz and their exposure for sure.
Really interesting news from Google. I think they’re making the right move to continue growing in the future.
It will be interesting to see what these means for the .xyz extension in terms of public usage or if Google ends up buying Alphabet.com and relocating down the line.
Serious companies are still not going to put huge $ branding on a .xyz or any other tld other than .com.
This is certainly not a game changer being as it is a simple mini site that will more than likely point to a .com, maybe Alphabet.com or a subdomain of Google.
Exchanging emails with Frank Schilling impressive!
How is that impressive?
Up until a month ago, he had been advertising here for a year.
What is that old saying about 15 minutes of fame, this story will come and go, no one gives a crap about xyz and because google chose a quirky extension the extension still .sucks.
Not hating xyz but maybe they got it because it was free LOL
Well, when I registered my plethora of .xyz domain names, I just took into account the shortness of the addresses. Three letters that are relatively easy to remember, almost as easy as .com when you think about it and way less saturated a market (though that may change soon) and not really too overrated at this point. Plus, it has a dynamism to it, with “xyz” being the last letters in the Roman alphabet used by many countries it just makes sense to have a domain name that ends with those letters. And really, I doubt “xyz” sucks when Google’s influence on it caused it to come from a few thousand registrations per day (mine included) to 20,000 new registrations immediately afterward. .XYZ is here to stay since unless you want to register a .COM with your full name (which actually .sucks for the people who have more generic names whose .COMs are probably taken by now) you’re pretty much screwed when it comes to getting something like a one word domain name which you’ll be able to easily get on one of the gTLDs.
My point is simply that Google knew that relying on .COMs is unsustainable in the long-term and that the future is in these gTLDs. By the way, I’m saying that as someone with quite a few .COMs, .NETs, and .ORGs myself.
Bad news for alphabet.com – already getting displaced in google by information about this new venture and they’ll need to buy a few more servers. It wasn’t owned by BMW perhaps there was a chance they’d do a utube.com and monetise the page.
Abc.xyz is an excellent domain name for Google.
This is not specifically about the greatness of the .xyz extension or missing out on the .com. It’s about how a new TLD can add a creative layer to the branding profile of any company to tell the story better. And that’s were the new TLD programme stands out.
As Joe Mahoney points out this is actually one of only a few good .xyz domains – he’s right.
So why is it so good:
1) Short and sweet and a good naming structure (three characters on each side of the dot)
2) Sounds great
3) A creative name which supports the branding story
4) Memorable (three first characters and three last characters in the alphabet)
When Google sneezes, the whole world feels it. The fact that Google registers a domain in the .xyz registry is in itself a publicity boost for the registry. Daniel Negari is very lucky.