I wonder if google bid 'g' for g.
Google OUTBID on g.co.uk at auction
Google may have spent an estimated $1.5m on the Colombian domain name g.co earlier this year, but it was outbid on g.co.uk in a recent auction by a domain investor. The desirable address sold for £76,000 at a Nominet auction, according to a list of sales compiled by domain names guru Ty Hancocks and reported by the FT today. …
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Monday 3rd October 2011 19:52 GMT uk_domain_names
Do I detect an undercurrent of sour grapes? Either way, it's time to nip this line of reasoning in the bud before the discussion goes too far down the rabbit hole...
The auctions were 100% OPEN, and were run to simple rules that were publicised many months in advance.
Anyone, anywhere in the world, was free to participate - the only "qualifier" was an initial £10 buy-in to join a given auction. Companies, non-profits, sole traders, partnerships, individuals - the auctions were open to any entity no matter what its "structure"...
So there was no collusion, no price fixing, no extortion, no racket - just a market operating "cleanly " without artificial barriers of any kind: a series of auctions in which the highest bidder won. It's impossible to concoct a fairer scenario than that!
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Tuesday 4th October 2011 10:54 GMT Intractable Potsherd
You are missing the point, uk_domain_names
The OP stated that domain-squatting companies should not be allowed to exist. The general opinion is that domain-squatting is extortion, and, like all other forms of extortion, should be made illegal. Regardless of the form of the auction, and whether it was "clean" (and I have no reason to suppose that it was not), it is what this type of company does afterward it has a domain name that is immoral.
Domain-squatters add nothing to anything and are mere parasites on society. They should, quite simply, be legislated out of existence. I'm guessing by your name that you too may be in that line of "business" and so have a different point of view, but tough.
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Tuesday 4th October 2011 00:26 GMT Andrew Smith
I'm not sure Google can claim any rights over the letter 'g'. The letter 'g' has believe it or not was used in words and products unrelated to Google long before Google couldn't think of a creative name for it's email product. To give an example a 'Giraffe' is not believe it or not a Google Iraffe and 'Golf' is not the game Olf popularised by Google.
But then again Yahoo! managed to persuade some admin assistant that they own the letter y so I guess anything is possible.
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Monday 3rd October 2011 15:57 GMT Grease Monkey
People seem to be presenting this story as "Google LOST". No they didn't they decided they weren't willing to pay more than 75 grand for the domain name. Actually I doubt it's even worth that. Google have got so much money they could have paid a million or more for that domain and hardly noticed. So if they were out at 75K then it's probably worth a lot less.
The investor that has bought it is probably the real loser here. If anybody wanted the domaint they would presumably have bid for it at the auction. If they weren't there bidding they probably don't want it that much. Certainly not more than 76 grand much. So who are they going to sell it to at a profit?
Does anybody really type Google.co.uk anyway? Don't we all just type our search term into the address bar of our browser and then the browser fires our query at our chosen search engine?