Google Announces Waymo; Recently Acquired Waymo.com + @waymo

google-waymo-logoAccording to an article in TechCrunch and a variety of other tech industry publications, Google is/has spun out its self-driving car unit into a new brand called Waymo. The company is part of Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

I was curious to see if the company acquired the exact match .com domain name, Waymo.com, and it looks like they did. According to Whois records, the current registrant of Waymo.com is Google, Inc. Using DomainTools Whois History Tool, I was able to see that the domain name was owned for a short period by DNStination Inc., a domain management company (among other things). Prior to this, Waymo.com appears to have been owned by a Colorado-based company called Waymo.

My guess is that Google used DNStination to stealthily acquire this domain name. If this is the case, this was a smart move doing so in advance of the news because most people would probably increase the asking price of a domain name if they thought a large company like Alphabet / Google was looking to acquire the domain name.

As of right now, Waymo.com is not resolving to a working website. It currently resolves to a Google-branded 404 error page stating “The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know.” I presume that Google will end up using Waymo.com for a landing page related to this business entity, or perhaps the domain name was simply acquired as a defensive measure.

It also looks like Google was able to get the @Waymo Twitter handle. It has just 86 followers at the time of publication, and the account has not yet tweeted. It lists Waymo.com as its url and has the logo I shared above as the profile photo.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

5 COMMENTS

Leave a Reply

Recent Posts

Chat.com Profitably Resold for 8 Figures

0
In March of this year, I reported on the sale of Chat.com. The domain name was acquired by HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah for more...

First Look at my 2023 Domain Industry PMC Jersey

1
This August, I will be riding in my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge ride to raise funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I will be riding...

Just Add “The”

4
I went to the post office the other day to buy stamps. I had a brief conversation with the person working at the counter,...

Uni-Parked Domains Now “may be for sale”

4
When GoDaddy announced the Afternic to Uni transition, I was notified I would need to change any Uni-related nameservers I use. I was curious...

2023 Pan-Mass Challenge

1
On August 5-6, I will embark on my tenth Pan-Mass Challenge ride to raise funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dana-Farber is one of the...