In November of 2014, it was announced that the one letter Z.com domain name was sold by Nissan North America for JPY800 million, which was worth just under $6.8 million USD at the time of the sale. The buyer was a Japanese company called GMO Internet Group.
According to an article written by Avi Mizrahi and published this morning on ForexMagnates.com, Z.com will be used as a trading platform. It appears that the platform is using the trade.z.com subdomain, and I am unsure if there are plans to use the domain name solely for the platform.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“GMO-Z.com Trade UK Limited (“Z.com Trade”), part of the Japan-headquartered GMO CLICK Group, officially launched an independenly developed trading platform today. The London-based branch of GMO CLICK will offer forex, indices and commodities on its multi-asset platform.
Z.com Trade now offers a range of platforms including Z.com Trader, its new flagship browser-based platform, MT4, API/FIX with access to the LMAX Exchange and mobile trading apps for iOS and Android.”
Check out Mizrahi’s article for full details about Z.com Trade and the GMO CLICK Group.
In the press release that was published shortly after the deal was announced, plans for Z.com were not mentioned. The company simply stated that “Z.com was acquired to spearhead GMO Internet Group global growth strategy, and securing “Z” under the .com Top Level Domain, provides the Group with a powerful tool to build a strong global brand.”
This was a notable sale because of the price paid as well as the fact that there are very few one letter .com domain names being used right now. The more I think about this deal, the more I think the price was exceptional.
I think eventually they’ll consolidate all the different brands including GMO (mostly used in Japan) under Z. Their recent announcement of GMO for Japan and Z for the rest of the world does not make sense to an Internet company when the Internet is global.