Breaking: Amazon Buys A.co, Z.co, K.co and Cloud.Co
TechCrunch.com, has just broke the story that Amazon.com has just acquired the domain names A.Co, Z.Co, K.Co and Cloud.co.
According to TechCrunch, Amazon purchased these domains from the .Co Registry for an undisclosed price.
“.Co is about to hit its 1 millionth domain registered in little under a year of service (.com is at over a hundred million) and is about to set up a stable pricing plan for one letter and two letter domains.”
.Co representative Lori Anne Wardi was quoted by TechCrunch as saying:
“With every allocation of a single letter domain name the pool of these gets less and less, with every sale we do the resource becomes smaller. We have a very long list of people who want one letter and two letter domains and price will be set high enough that each person who buys one of these will use it.”
As we all know Overstock bought O.co for $350,000 and has rebranded its non-US operations as O.co.
We also know that the .Co registry allocated Twitter; T.Co for use as a shortener and Godaddy.com X.co.
This is another huge move for the registry and it will be especially interesting to see what Amazon’s plans for Cloud.Co is especially after Apple Spent $4.5 Million for iCloud.com
A.co is a natural for Amazon
K.co will no doubt be used in conjunction with Amazon’s Kindle Product.
In 2009 Amazon bought Zappos and Z.co is mostly likely for use with that product, but those are all unconfirmed.
Congrats to Juan, Lori and the whole .Co Registry team.
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Nice sale. Nobody seems to want i.co
wow!
Great job to all involved.
Looking forward to seeing the new sites developed.
Google….you know you want g.co
i.co is worth somewhere north of $2-million.
Sitting down with a bowl of popcorn waiting for the usual suspects to show up to start battling yay v. nay on dotCO.
I peed my pants when I saw this.
Wait wait I need to gather myself
But I will be back.
Any idea on what Cloud.co sold for?
Before you go off peeing your pants, a little patients may go a long way here.
I would be more interested in seeing how Amazon plans to use these domains.
If nothing is done with them, i.e. nothing is built on the sites then they will add no value to the .CO domain extension at all.
On the flip side, if Amazon has a new marketing strategy and puts its marketing dollars behind the domains… well then pee away my friend, pee away.
Just my opinion.
Cheers
wow !!!
Congrats to the Registry.
@Slate
If you read the article closely,
You can gather that Amazon paid a pretty sum for these nice 4 domains, I’d reckon probably in the $2,000,000Million range.
You don’t pay this kind of sum unless there are big plans in the works my friend.
@ Robert
You have absolutely no idea how much Amazon.com paid. You basically pulled a number out of your @ss and then said to pay that much Amazon must have big plans.
It is no surprise there is demand for L.co, as there is demand for virtually any single letter domain in any reasonable extension.
This is probably good news for promotion of .CO, but it has no impact on the value of crappy .CO domains.
Brad
Incredible. This looks like it’s going to be a banner year for the .co ext.
Any new tech or term like cloud, tablets, single letters, generics are going to be good for .co owners.. Really how could they not. It is already making people thousands of dollars on private sales.
Don
brad@
“This is probably good news for promotion of .CO, but it has no impact on the value of crappy .CO domains”
A crappy domain is a crappy domain in any TLD.
@Brad
However you want to cut it.
In the annuls of domains, hell the Internet
.CO stands singularly supreme over and above every other ext without exception.
.CO can never again be questioned.
It now is beyond reproach.
Long live the new King.
I like the name Cloud.CO
It stands out in visual branding perspective, and looks better than iCloud.com
Just my opinion…
@Robert enough with the god damn cheerleader stuff
Overall its good for .co and amazon. We shall see what happens.
In regards to .co let’s see how many .co drop. I’m betting it will be a high number
Congrats to Lori, Juan and the others and to the buyer! COinternet has been doing an excellent job with promoting the extension.
LOL! Good timing on behalf of the .CO registry. Just as everyones .CO domains are coming up for renewal. Strike a deal with Amazon and get everyone talking about .CO again and how great it is. Hell it must be if Amazon is getting involved.
Now everyone will re-register all their crappy .CO domains and think they will be set for a big pay day.
Great move.
A.co K.co
Amazon has tons of money … strange they haven’t acquired the best .com
“Amazon has tons of money … strange they haven’t acquired the best .com”
I don’t want to sound too “Robert Clinish”, but it’s strange if you don’t realize that maybe they liked these domains more than other .com alternatives.
“liked these domains”
probably Amazon wants to use these .co as internal short-URLs for Amazon, Zappos and Kindle links
How much are 2 character .co domains worth?
it’s strange that A.co hasn’t been acquired by Apple before Amazon
Amazon gets ~double the visitors compared to Apple
“Amazon has tons of money … strange they haven’t acquired the best .com”
_______
I think Amazon is very smart. Amazon acquired .CO simple because it is cheaper than .com and its good time to buy with “value for money” , and it serves the same goal and purpose as .com
May be Amazon sees .CO as an opportunity in new trend for branding and marketing.
May be Amazon have a new vision and wants to “push new boundaries” and being creative in terms of marketing and branding with .CO for global cyber brands, and staying away with old traditional corporate brand in .com
M
Now that’s a good question.
“Amazon gets ~double the visitors compared to Apple”
but Apple has twice+ the money than Amazon
Most probably Amazon got those dot co for free-
Free publicity for the registry.
Dot com is still KING!!
amazon.CO is a spam worthless BS time and money wasting site!!!
Bull
Amazon did NOT get these domains for free
They paid a substantial amount for them
“Substantial” could be taken a many different ways.
Substantial to one person may not be substantial to another, so for this it would be in the eyes of the article writer.
But what they paid for the domains is not as important (in my opinion) as what the plans are with the domains. If they are just getting added to a portfolio, then it does the .CO extension no good.
If they are turned into a shortener… Again, no good for the .CO extension.
What needs to happen for this to be a big deal is that Amazon puts marketing dollars (and a whole lot of them to the tune of Millions) behind these new domain names.
If Amazon can pull off a successful new marketing campaign with these domains, then that will help bring extension awareness to the average person/small business owner(s) and even large business owner(s) and that will have the desired effect of driving domain name prices.
So right now its just a waiting game.
Just my opinion.
Cheers
“”What needs to happen for this to be a big deal is that Amazon puts marketing dollars (and a whole lot of them to the tune of Millions) behind these new domain names”
You mean like Overstock has done with O.co?
@Bulls
.CO domains could only get granted for free to brands joining the .CO Founders Program (like, for example, Twitter did for T.CO).
Why would Amazon waste the time of negotiation and effort to sit on these? No matter how big you are a dollar is a dollar and time is time. The registry has shown a history of trying to find real end-users and not just taking every dollar.
Everyone believes many, many .co will not renew. But they should drop. Many were caught up in the frenzy and registered junk. I have 3 or 4 out of 50 or so I will not renew. This junk dropping should not adversely effect quality generic .CO holdings and actually clear the way for end users to hand register “brandables.”
@BFitz
“Everyone believes many, many .co will not renew”
It’s normal that a number of .CO’s will get dropped (IMO the number won’t be that high though), that happens in any extensions, even in .com, and has happened in any stage of the evolution of the WWW (many people even let their premium .coms drop when domains stopped being free and registrants had to be charged yearly).
99% of unrenewed .co will be those registered only to try to make money with their sale
“99% of unrenewed .co will be those registered only to try to make money with their sale”
what a TRIVIAL statement is this!?!?!?!?
“TRIVIAL statement”
no, because I believe that this doesn’t happen with .com after just a year
I’ve several not used nor sold .com but that I renew from several years
@AMAcloud.COM
“no, because I believe that this doesn’t happen with .com after just a year
I’ve several not used nor sold .com but that I renew from several years”
Once again:
The statement
“99% of unrenewed .co will be those registered only to try to make money with their sale” is trivial and NO difference to .com
A statement “99% of .co registered only to try to make money with their sale will be unrenewed” wouldn’t be trivial and would be a contradiction to .com
Do you see the difference?
@MBH
“You mean like Overstock has done with O.co?”
Yes like O.co *BUT* also bring it to the US markets.
O.co has not really been marketed to the US and I would hazard to guess that the US makes up a large number of transactions and traffic via the web. (just a guess… no statistics to back that up)
Plus .CO is kind of common place as PART of an extension in many other countries. In the US .CO can only be looked upon as a miss spelling of .COM until such a time that a MAJOR company makes an attempt to shed light to the extension.
Quite frankly the average person (outside of those who deal with domains) will not be able to tell you much about .CO.
So a long way to answer your question… Yes, kind of like Overstocks O.co but brought globally and directly to the US markets.
Just my opinion
Cheers
“Do you see the difference?”
no, english isn’t my mother language
@BFitz
“Many were caught up in the frenzy and registered junk. I have 3 or 4 out of 50 or so I will not renew. This junk dropping should not adversely effect quality generic.”
I agree with that statement.
I will invoke my time in the military (US Navy, Submarines) to make this comparison.
Before every patrol, we would go out to a secure location and do (what is referred to as) Angles and Dangles. We would take large up angles, large down angles, list the boat (and yes we referred to the sub as “the boat”) as much as possible in order to shake down any loose and unsecured items on the sub.
Its that initial shake down that would allow us to have a successful patrol with out fear of being detected from something shifting or moving out of place. Remember, sound travels well in water.
So with out a doubt that .CO (as all great experiments and companies will have) will go through a shake down. For .CO, this means those who thought they would be able to drop $30 and in two months make $30,000, will drop out. They had no intentions on being in for the long haul (as what will be required for any new start up). They where the unsecured items that got “shook out” during the shake down. There may be many… but it will NOT be the majority.
The rest are domain investors (who did not register crap domains) and are willing to hang in for the long haul *OR* are start up businesses that brought to life a online presence and of course will be in for the long haul.
Either which way, for the extension to be really successful, it will need large backing (money) by a noted company and brought to the average person attention.
Just my opinion.
Cheers
Slate
“You mean like Overstock has done with O.co?”
“”Yes like O.co *BUT* also bring it to the US markets.”"
I don’t know where you live but I have seen a ton of commercials in the US for o.co
Also don’t forget in its naming rights deal OverStock signed with the Oakland stadium they gave themselves the option to rename the stadium from Overstock.com to O.co
I would love to see it named O.CO stadium. That would do wonders, but its not named that right now… is it? (serious question)
If its not… the “It may be named that in the future”, *MAY* being the optimal word in that quote does not get me down the road. Too many variables on something that may or may not happen.
As far as Overstock commercials. I am married (been so for over 10 years) with a 2 year old. If its not on NickJr (my son) or on the Womens channel (my wife), I probably haven’t seen it, not to mention that any commercials are zipped through on DVR at a 15 speed. LOL. For the most part, I have not really watched TV for 10 years.
Anyways, from what I can tell, it seems that Overstock has made the “Also Known As” Or “Shortcut” but not a full rebrand to O.co
That is just my point of view.
Cheers
Slate
“its not named that right now… is it? (serious question)”
No but they just got the rights a month ago. They have a 6 or 7 year deal.
The “may” in this scenario is within the total control of Overstock so there aren’t a whole bunch of things that have to happen for the name to get changed.
Will overstock pull the trigger?
Don’t know if they will, but they reserved the right to.
Not a full rebrand here in the US but o.Co is mentioned extensively in the commercials and people are incentivized to use O.co rather than Overstock.com since they get free shipping if they use the .Co domain to order
Ahh… Its free shipping if they use O.co or Overstock.com
They both link to Overstock.com, there is no difference between the domains. I typed it in 3 times and they both bring me to Overstock.com
I will close down my browser and relaunch just to make sure… but its not looking like there is much of a difference there.
Cheers
Slate
You can check these out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnrsHjgzs68
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE8opFRWoq4
Here is the father’s day commercial
There is a slight difference between the O.co and the Overstock.com
You physically need to shut down your browser completely if you want to see the difference between the two.
Overstock.com has free shipping on first item and the logo is a bit different. It has the overstock.com logo with the “Shortcut: O.co” sub logo.
O.co still brings you to the Overstock.com site but the logo is now O.co with the Also known as Overstock.com sub logo. Also on the O.co, you get free shipping on EVERY order (not just the first).
Just thought that was interesting.
Cheers
Cool commercials but they are not 100% behind the domain.
What I mean by that is that they are touting it as a “Shortcut” and not a rebrand.
For me, If I was pushing to have that domain stand alone, I would start with the site being a scrape the original (and not just a redirect) so that it stands alone (under its own domain name) but still a mirror copy of the original.
Then I would put my advertising $ behind awareness of the new domain and NOT tout it as a “Shortcut”.
But I like that they have an incentive to use O.co with the free shipping. Still if people go to Overstock they may be thrown off with the free shipping listed there as well.
Just my opinion.
Cheers
Unless I misread this, the only beneficiary of this sale was the REGISTRY who probably made hundreds of thousands of dollars- no domainers benefited. If they are just used as URL shorteners this means nothing. But if amazon actually builds a full service or website on Cloud.co, then it can be viewed as a BIG PLUS for domainers. BUT *** if it’s just a URL shortener/shortcut, BIG FAIL for domainers, especially those who consider holding onto their .co domains or buying more because of this.
I also agree with Slate here, MHB. I see those overstock commercials all the time and they only mention “o.co” as a “shortcut,” and are using the whole “free shipping” thing to get people to type it in. They also only say the term o.co once or twice during the commercial now, whereas in the past when the commercials first started airing they were saying “o.co” multiple times over. I think they might be weening off of o.co, that’s honestly what it seems like. Or at least backing off a bit. They spent years and years building the “overstock” brand I truly believe they will stick with it in the end.
Dont get me wrong. I hope that .CO does well. I have a limited, speculative interest in .CO extension.
But, I do not consider myself a domainer (as to say that I do not make my living off domains in any shape or form). I do however, consider myself a realist and even though I have an interest in .CO and .COMs, I prefer to call it like it is.
.CO still has a long way to prove itself and that is mainly going to come from the overall acceptance by businesses (or people who make fully functional sites). The hurdle of overcoming the “M” or lack there of is relatively small in the scheme of things and will be filtered out within a year or two after a HUGE company invests FULL backing of a .CO domain.
Until that happens, .CO domains will be sub-par and only command a minimum amount (compared to .COM) for premium domains, as has been documented in past sales.
Just my opinion.
Cheers
When MHB has a post that involves .CO, it seems to average 50+ comments. Obviously, there is a tremendous amount of interest; pro or con in regards to .CO. There are many ways to prosperity, whether you are a domain investor or an end-user. I find it in poor taste to read posts that continually beat up on one another or grandstand.
If gTLD’s and ccTLD’s become more successful (in the eyes of the beholder), don’t we all win?
-Peter