Welcome to the first ever Domain Movers series on TheDomains! If this is the first time you are seeing the series, this is what it’s all about:

Domain Movers are domain names that I dig hard to find that have been acquired by some of the largest companies in the world. These discoveries are often the very first time it is being published and may not be made public otherwise. These discoveries often are early indicators of new brands, new products, services and more by companies. The domain names have either been obtained via acquisitions from an individual or company, purchased in the domain aftermarket or simply “hand registered” meaning the company registered the domain for the standard fee anybody would pay when a domain is available to register.

The information is heavily based on whois records, experience and sometimes luck! I always will provide what I see and once in a great while I may be wrong on an assumption due to lack of information.. but not often!

Ok, now that you know what you are about to see, lets get going!

ConocoPhillips Company registered the domain names CopApp.org, .net, .biz . CopApp.com is listed for sale at Sedo, but I am getting an invalid whois record currently? So there is potential that maybe the domain has been purchased and is in transfer mode?

Blini SA which appears to be a new company, has acquired the domain name Blini.com from Telepathy, Inc. who was using DomainNameSales.com at the time of the sale. Blini SA appears to have some connection at least to Labeyrie Fine Foods, which is an Australian company. I wasn’t able to find a sale price.

CURRIES Division of ASSA ABLOY Door Group, LLC has acquired the domain name OrderPro.com a domain name that has been registered since 2006. The domain was owned by a Michael Ziegler of Iowa and had a for sale lander on the domain name.The Assa Abloy Group is a Swedish lock manufacturer. The curries division offers hollow metal doors, steel, composite and commercial doors.

RegionalAircraft.com has been acquired from BuyDomains.com by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client. The domain had a listing price of $1,988. BAE Systems Plc is a likely buyer as they use CSC and own Regional-Services.com which is the Regional Aircraft customer portal.

Everris International B.V. has acquired the domain name ZipSpeed.com . The domain name was owned by a Stephen Carnes and registered at GoDaddy prior.

Disney Enterprises, Inc. registered several new domain names and those were: DisneyStarDarlings.com, StarDarlingsApp.com (they do not appear to own StarDarlings.com which was registered 7/10/2014). They also registered DisneyWonderPlay.com .net .org .biz and WonderPlayApps.com .net .org .biz. WonderPlay.com is owned by Wonderplay Inc. which is a photography site.

GetValid.com was sold by HugeDomains.com likely for $1,869. I’m not sure if this was an individual that purchased it or a company.

GiftBaskets.com which is owned by Hayneedle Inc. and they acquired it in 2007 has never shown Hayneedle in whois, until now. Why they have done this now, I’m not sure. The domain has long showed only “NetNames” as the registrant. There were traces of Hayneedle in whois but registrant data never showed Hayneedle Inc. until now.

BMJ Publishing Group Limited has acquired the domain name BMJ.com . It appears the transaction took place either very late 2013 or very early 2014.

takethechance OG (TakeTheChance.at) were the $15,000 buyers of TakeTheChance.com from DomainMarket.com

Google Inc. has acquired the domain LiftWare.com. The domain was under privacy at eNom but was listed for sale with a $3,800 BIN at Sedo but that listing still remains. The domain switched in whois to NAMESTORE.COM CONSTRUCTION PUBLICATIONS, INC. NAMESTORE.COM – URLCOLLECTION.COM – TOPNAMES.COM on December 24, 2014 and then went into privacy. The domain was owned by DMITRY GORILOVSKY prior to the single whois record for NameStore.com on the 24th.

Based on this information, it appears that Google used the services of NameStore.com to help acquire the domain name. Liftware.com has since transferred into brand domain name management services MarkMonitor.

Google has a new product called Liftware, which is a “stabilizing handle and a selection of attachments that include a soup spoon, everyday spoon, and fork. Liftware is designed to help people with hand tremor eat more easily” and uses the page http://www.google.com/liftware/

OnExtender.com has been registered on behalf of an currently unknown client of MarkMonitor

Microsoft Corporation has acquired the domain name VsPartner.com according to whois records. The domain came out of whois privacy and showed a Tom Lindeman prior to the change of ownership. This may relate to the VSIP Partner Offerings in some fashion? It was called Visual Studio Partners in the past.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has registered the domain name WalmartMoneyMatters.com

MarkMonitor has acquired the domain name YourVoiceCounts.com from BuyDomains.com, but it was only shortly owned by BuyDomains! The domain was owned by Registration Technologies, Inc. and had a 12/24/2014 expire date. The domain then dropped from the registry. A 3/14/2015 whois records shows the domain was registered with NAMESALACARTE.COM LLC registrar. By 3/15/2015 whois record shows RN WebReg / Rarenames Inc. aka BuyDomains.com in whois. By 3/25/2015 MarkMonitor Inc. shows up in whois.

So BuyDomains owned the domain for less than 10 days! YourVoiceCounts.com sold at BuyDomains for $1,716 on 3/24/2015.

Marchex has sold the domain name GetIR.com on Sedo for $15,000 to a currently unknown buyer.

Partsearch Technologies, Inc. owners of PartSearch.com is actually owned by Best Buy according to whois records. Partsearch Technologies, Inc. are the owners of about 300 domain names and Best Buy acquired the company / assets in a bankruptcy auction for $6.1 Million . The company went bankrupt after losing Best Buy as its largest client. Partsearch and Best Buy had a disagreement over rebates, which lead to the fallout. PartStore.com is another domain acquired in the process.

The transaction appears to have taken place sometimes in 2011 according to this Wikipedia page. There is more information relating to the fallout between the two companies on this Wikipedia page as well.

It appears that Best Buy is likely getting ready to do something new with PartSearch.com as the domain switched to a new hosting provider but doesn’t resolve yet at the time of this article. PartStore.com is an active site and states on the website that it’s a Best Buy Brand.

The reason I shared the Partsearch story is because sometimes it isn’t always as easy as just buying a domain in the aftermarket or hand registering a domain to become the owner of it. Often times, domain names owned by large companies are gained through acquisitions of some other company. In the Best Buy case, they appear to have greatly helped in the movement of the bankruptcy auction, which in the end they acquiring the assets of the company, which included several nice domain names. That part I found really interesting.

I hope you enjoyed the first series of Domain Movers on TheDomains! I welcome your comments and suggestions.