Welcome to the latest installment of domain name movers that are mainly all associated with domains acquired by large companies for future products, services and brands. As always, these are mainly all very early discoveries.
Amazon Technologies Inc. which has a payment service called Amazon Simple Pay (ASP) is discontinuing the service on June 1, 2015.
Interesting to note, Simple Payments Corp acquired the domain name SimplePay.com between 10/31/2014 to 1/25/2015 when the domain went into privacy protection at GoDaddy.com on the latter date according to whois records. The domain name was owned by Tucows YummyNames. The domain was using DomainNameSales.com until 10/31/2014, and Archive.org is showing the current website as of 12/22/2014. DomainNameSales reported the sale on 2/8/2015 for $25,800.
NicVideo.com has been acquired with the help of Comlaude for a currently unknown MarkMonitor client. NicFire.com as well.
Thickener.com which was owned by The Dow Chemical Company, a MarkMonitor client, simply allowed the domain name to expire after being registered since 1996. The domain name dropped/released from the registry and was grabbed by Dropcatch.com on April 5, 2015.
Johnson & Johnson has acquired the domain name iCanImagine.com
Netflix, Inc. registered the domain name CampHeroProductions.com to add to its 900+ domain names.
Time Inc. has registered the domain name OpenTheExperience.com
Bridgestone Americas, Inc. registered the domain name StayTheRoad.com
Galderma SA has acquired the domain name Excipial.com. The domain name has been registered since 2008 and was under privacy protection prior but came out of privacy on 1/7/2015 with Alexander Zinovjev of Russia as the owner and by 3/27/2015 showing Galderma as the owners. The domain has since transferred into domain registrar CSC Corporate Domains. Excipial is skincare products by Galderma.
MotionZone.com has been acquired by DJO Global. The transaction actually took place back on June 17, 2013 but name servers were just updated now. The domain name was using DomainNameSales.com at the time of the transaction.
ThePlayback.com has been acquired from BuyDomains.com by a currently unknown MarkMonitor client. The domain has been registered since 2007. The domain had a $1,988 listing price.
Showtime Networks Inc. has registered the domain name UnleashShowtime.com
WorstToFirst.com has been acquired by Verizon. The domain appeared to expire according to whois history records back on January 7, 2014. The domain sold, likely in an expired GoDaddy Auction for $7,500 with that being reported April 6, 2014. The domain transferred to Name.com after that and was owned by a Aj Singh. The domain has since went into whois privacy on January 5, 2015. The domain then switched to a mix domain name server containing MarkMonitor and Name.com servers. The domain now resolves to “The Numbers Don’t Lie” and fiber optics Fios website for Verizon. I have reached out to Aj for confirmation of the sale and to see if he can share any details but I have yet to hear back at time of posting.
General Motors LLC has registered 3 similar domain names and those include: 500MillionThank.com, 500MillionThanks.com and 500MillionThankYou.com
Gobe.com has changed ownership according to whois records. The domain name was registered at GoDaddy under privacy for many years and transferred to CSC Corporate Domains on 4/2/2015.
OwnTheMoment.com which sold at Sedo and had a $1,910 listing price was purchased by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client. Bauer Hockey Inc. are potential buyers, as they are a CSC client and they are also running “Own The Moment” ads and using the hashtag #ownthemoment.
Microsoft continues with its “js” domain name registrations which started with JackrabbitJS.com and now continues with BobcatJS.com, DistributorJS.com, IgnitionJS.com, LeopardJS.com, ManifoldJS.com, OdometerJS.com and RoarJS.com. They also registered the .net domains with each.
Microsoft has also acquired HoloLens.info and HoloLens.org. HoloLens.info and .org were registered on 1/19/2015. Microsoft announce HoloLens on January 21, 2015.
PepsiCo, Inc has become the owners of GreenLabel.com according to whois records. Complex Media Inc. were the past registrants in whois and appears that Pepsi was working with Complex in some fashion as the GreenLabel.com domain resolved to the current website. Complex acquired the domain name on 10/23/2014 from Green Label Organic: Sustainable Threads, LLC which had a website on the domain at that time. It appears that Pepsi started the project on the domain name Green-Label.com, the hyphen version of the domain. That domain now redirects to GreenLabel.com.
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), using domain registrar CSC Corporate Domains services acquired the domain name AskWatson.net on the drop when DropCatch.com grabbed the domain. The .com is under whois privacy and is at Network Solutions and is not owned by IBM.
IBM also acquired the domain name AskWatson.org which was registered with Epik.com under whois privacy and listed for sale on DomainNameSales.com. The domain was acquired on 2/6/2015.
AskWatson.biz also appears to have been grabbed on the drop, on 1/29/2015 and is now owned by IBM.
AskWatson.us was registered on 12/18/2014 by CSC / IBM after it expired in late 2012.
So currently, the most important .com is not owned by IBM and nor is the .info. IBM Watson is a cognitive system enabling a new partnership between people and computers.
Amazon Technologies Inc. registered the domain names AmazonConsultancy.com, AmazonDesktopApps.com, AmazonEFS.com, AmazonElasticFileSystem.com and AmazonWAM.com. They continued registering with AWSefs.com, AwsDesktopApps.com, AwsElasticFileSystem.com and AwsMachineLearning.com. They also registered ElasticFileSystem.com
Abbott Laboratories has registered the domain name RefineTheProcess.com
VIRTUAL REAL / Oliver Hoger has acquired the domain name Tohe.com from The Readers Digest Association, Inc.
Ancestry.com Operations Inc. has revealed that they own the domain name FindAGrave.com. The domain name has long been under whois privacy and the website on the domain name has been the way it is for many years.
Streamlight Inc has acquired the premium generic domain name Flashlights.com from Flashlights Inc. / Bill French. Bill had a message on Flashlights.com that the company has since retired. A January 25, 2014 message on the website stated the Flashlights Inc was going out of business. Flashlights Inc. was an authorized stocking distributor of Streamlight products. Very nice generic product domain and a wise acquisition by Streamlight Inc.
