Ocean.com Appears to Have Sold

In my daily DomainTools registrant alert email, I noticed that Ocean.com appears to have changed hands. The domain name was privately registered and it is now registered to DNStination Inc., the privacy proxy registration details for MarkMonitor clients.

I reached out to Richard Lau, whose company owned Ocean.com, to ask him if the domain name sold. Unfortunately, Richard could not comment. He did tell me, “I can say I’m happy. And that I think Mark Monitor is a great, very professional organization to work with.” My guess is that it sold (likely for high 6 or quite possibly 7 figures), but I presume this is a deal that will never hit the DNJournal sale report.

Ocean.com was acquired by Richard’s company for $100,000 back in 2011 at the Domain Madness auction in Las Vegas. At the time of the sale, it was the second largest sale of the week and it ranks as the 59th largest publicly reported domain name sale of 2011.

Richard gave me a brief back story on how he acquired the domain name at auction:

“I only purchased the name, in person, at the Domain Madness auction in Las Vegas, because I went down on a whim to network. In fact, I was told about the domain being in the auction in a limo at 1am just outside the Palms Hotel. There’s more to that story but you’ll have to wait for another day for that one.

There’s a saying: ‘You make your own luck. If you sit at home, you’re never going to get the luck.'”

As you likely know, Richard is also the founder of NamesCon, the largest domain name conference held each January in Las Vegas. NamesCon was recently acquired by World Hosting Days.

It will be interesting to see what company acquired Ocean.com (again, assuming it sold) and how the domain name will be used.