Verizon to Sell and Release Up To 100,000 Domains

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According ot FariWinds Partners Press Release,  FairWinds Partners, a member of CADNA, has been working with Verizon Communications to develop and implement an innovative approach to optimizing Verizon’s domain portfolio.

“”””Verizon’s domain name portfolio strategy has enabled cuts of over $1.1million in unnecessary spending while at the same time increasing incoming revenue and the overall strength of the brand. Verizon and FairWinds worked together to halt the wasteful registration of domains which offered little or no value to the company. It is estimated that it would have cost Verizon$725,000 over the next two years to maintain the unproductive domain names it cut from its portfolio.””””

“”””In the past, domains that generated little traffic, including some that were hugely expensive to maintain over time, were added to the portfolio”””” said Sarah Deutsch, Vice President & Associate General Counsel of Verizon Communications.

“””Moving forward, we are making a concerted effort to be vigilant in our efforts to create a targeted and effective portfolio.”””

In addition to the cuts made to the portfolio, the two companies together identified unbranded domains owned by Verizon that were not critical to Verizon’s online strategy and may be desirable to other companies. As a result of these efforts, Verizon can now broker these unneeded domains to third parties to produce as much as $2 million in new cash which can be applied to other areas of the business or returned to shareholders.

These savings highlight important ways in which other companies can retool their domain name program to increase brand visibility, cut wasteful expenditures and identify new sources of revenue. Verizon will be able to bring in approximately 3 million new visitors for its Web sites with its new strategy, often by redirecting domains in order to provide customers with expected content.

“We want to make sure that our customers get to where they want to be on the first try,” said Brian Price, Executive Director of Verizon’s Online Center of Excellence. This provides a better experience for customers and benefits the company as well. “The top ten domains that we redirected have garnered a quarter of a million visitors and over 1K sales in the last six weeks alone.”

Interesting that a company like Verizon, another member of CADNA, need help to anaylsis what domains they need to keep.

Verizon did not say how they plan on selling these domains.

Based of its “savings” of $725,000 we can assume that they are selling or releasing 100,000 domains or if they are paying top dollar for their domains of $35 per year, they would be selling or releasing over 20,000 domains.

Anyway you look at it, that is a lot of domains

Also I wonder if any “trademark” infringing” domains, are going to be released in the cost savings measure and if so I further question whether the legal costs of then regaining those domains, that make no money but which Verizon will chase down has been taken into account.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  3. jim joystone says

    Yeah right. After stealing them from domainers under the guise of TM violations, they are now going to sell. CADNA and Fairwinds two-faced whores with ONE agenda.

  5. Steve M says

    …er, um…perchance Tucows could sell them for Verizon…well; except for the ones they decide to keep for themselves, of course…

  6. MHB says

    Mike

    Not a typo.

    They said they are saving $725K so my math that is around 100,000 domains at normal renewal fees but I pointed out It could be as low as 20,000 domains if they are paying $35 a year.

  8. Dma says

    How did VZ get all these names? They can;t all be from trademark lawsuits, can they? Selling them dilutes their trademark and letting them go will add on legal bills as soon as someone else registers them

  10. Chart Name says

    What I think is hilarious is that if they release these domains, and do so in such a public manner, what US court would ever allow them to win a case in which they knowingly sold a domain to someone then sued them to get it back?

  11. MHB says

    Chart

    I believe there are many cases where a former owner of a domain, lost the domain, and sued to get it back under a WIPO action and the panel gave it to the TM.

  12. joe says

    They’re probably going to drop their own trademarked domains and just sue anyone that registers them. These bigger brands don’t want to have to register thier trademarked terms in every new tld when one comes out.

    Or, they are going to create .ver or .vzn, or something like that. That’s my bet.

  15. MHB says

    UPDATE

    Having talked to Fairwinds they said there are not 100,000 domains being released or sold.

    There is a significant number but well lower than 100,000 due to their higher registration costs.

    They also confirmed that they will not be dropping any “trademark infringing domains”.

    They do have some good generic domains available and I am working on getting a list of these.

  20. Jacob says

    MHB-

    Thank you for your reply and for looking into this list. I think there should be more than enough to go around for everyone. I can’t wait to hear back…

    I have been trying to negotiate on premium domains, but people aren’t willing to negotiate price point. Domainers need to realize that they should NOT be emotionally attached to domains. It’s business not personal.

    Thanks again,

    Jacob N. Nojoumi
    http://www.edendomains.com