Crain’s Detroit Business is reporting that Barnes & Noble was the winning bidder for the domain names of the now shuttered and bankrupt Borders, which I assume includes Borders.com . In addition, it was reported that B&N also bought Waldenbooks domain names as well, another book store that had been owned by Borders.
The auctions for Borders’ assets sold for a total of $15.8 million, although the totals weren’t broken down by individual units. Barnes & Noble was not the only buyer though, according to Crain’s. The sale was handled by Hilco Trading LLC.
According to the article, “Hilco said Barnes & Noble was one buyer of the assets, which included “a global portfolio of trademarks; the Borders, Waldenbooks and Brentano’s trade names; Internet domain names; and the Borders.com e-commerce website.””
Barnes & Noble also owns Books.com, which forwards to the company’s primary website.
Sort of unreal in that Borders was a great bookstore at one time and Waldenbooks was a hugely popular corner store at the local mall. Everything eventualy changes. Look at Circuit City. Their bankruptcy seemed to come out of nowhere. Sudden disappearance.