It appears that Google has acquired the two letter YT.com domain name. According to the DomainTools Whois History Tool, YT.com was previously registered under privacy at Dynadot. As of today, the Whois information is public, and Google is listed as the domain name registrant. The domain name is now registered at Mark Monitor. It looks like Google bought YT.com very recently.
Before YT.com became registered under privacy in February of 2015, the domain name was owned by a company with an address in Japan. It appears that this domain name was registered to the same owner since at least 2002 when the first Whois History record can be found on DomainTools. The domain name has a creation date of January 1996, so it is possible that company owned YT.com for several years prior to this 2002 record.
An Archive.org history search shows that YT.com had been used by the former owner. I don’t read Japanese, so I can’t comment on how the domain name was being used by its former owner.
I searched through my email, and I don’t see any mention of YT.com being listed for sale. Since Gmail archives all of the email I receive, I likely would have had a newsletter or other email mentioning that YT.com was for sale. Since that is not the case, my guess is that Google acquired this domain name privately. I would also guess that Google paid well into the six figures or more likely seven figures to acquire this domain name. In 2010, Facebook acquired the FB.com domain name for $8.5 million. Perhaps the price of YT.com will be shared in a company blog post or SEC filing in the future.
I don’t see any mentions about this acquisition, and at the current time, YT.com is not resolving for me. My guess is that Google will use YT.com for something to do with YouTube, but I am sure we will all find out in due time. Perhaps it will be used as a url shortener.
Thank you to George Kirikos for sharing this news via Twitter.
Very nice information. No doubt we will find out what they intend to use the domain for.
Thanks for sharing
I received this response from the owner back in late 2014. You would have to assume it was in this range, or definitely low 7 figures.
“The “yt.com” price is around $2M to $3M in USD.
There are lots of demands on “yt.com” from international companies and
individuals, the price must be between $2M and $3M in USD.”
In all honesty, there is no way it went for 2-3M.. even if you assume there is a haircut from fb.com, you are looking at 5.5 at the min.
Are you assuming the seller knew Google was the buyer?
My guess was that it was a covert acquisition and the seller didn’t know the buyer until later.
Very good point Elliot.. But I would figure in that price range, they would have done their due diligence.
Is this the answer from years ago or ????
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/04/11/every-character-counts-google-secures-new-url-shortener-domain-yt-be/
As recently as early 2014 YT.com was being marketed by Fairwinds for high 6 figures. I think they probably got it for between $1Million and $2 million which was a steal.