In what appears to be another blockbuster domain sale in two days, publicly traded Vodafone Group (Nasdaq:VOD) has sold the domain name 360.com to the company that operates 360.cn.
The domain transfer took place today.
360.cn is ranked by Alexa as the 49th most visited site on the internet worldwide and the 9th most visited site in China.
360.com gives 360.cn the ability to go global and like JD.com which went public last year give the site a reach well beyond China.
The fact that the domain was owned by Vodafone, a public company with a market cap of $96 Billion indicates to me that the sale, which has not been announced yet is definitely, in my opinion and 7 figure sale and we would not be surprised at all if the price paid by 360.cn was higher than the $8.9 Million dollar sale of Porno.com that we announced yesterday.
The domain space is red hot as companies are finally waking up to the fact that they NEED certain .Com domains moving forward.
Good news for everyone in the space and we will let you know if there is any announcement.
George Hong of GUTA .com claims the domain was sold for more than $14 million USD because that price had already been turned down.
I don’t understand why they would not register a 360.Anything GTLD for $25?
LOL
Is this a serious question?
If so, here’s the answer : Because they don’t want to lose traffic and they don’t want a .superlong that nobody will remember?
We have three great” China” .com names~ we’ll be looking for more~ you’re right~ these Chinese companies will need these names in the future. Thanks for posting this Michael.
Who would’ve thought 20 years ago heck even 10 years ago that numerical domains particularly .com numericals would be like GOLD.
We don’t even have all Chinese or all Indians online yet. One billion and counting are roaring ahead to join all the others online.
Exciting times indeed.
Isn’t that the truth. I have no idea what type of names they prefer in India but I’m going to find out.
Indian based purchases have not been anything close to what Chinese buyers have been paying.
I have had over 1000 inquiries from Indian based IP’s in the past 5 years, I have yet to close a single sale with any of them.
Two different marketplaces when it comes to domains.
The buyer, Qihoo 360, is a public company (stock symbol = QIHU on NYSE) with a market cap of USD $7.5 Billion, so it’s possible that the transaction might show up in their SEC filings at some point. Since Vodafone is so much larger ($93 Billion market cap), the domain name transaction (even if it was $10MM or $20MM) is less likely to be considered “material” to their business (warranting disclosure in the financial statements).
George Hong is reporting the sales price was at least USD $14MM.
I found the Chinese news on Techweb.com.cn very interesting. It basically says the lack of a global domain name is a major brand risk to the company, and purchase of 360.com will greatly raise its global image. So, if you want a global image, get .com.
It’s not about .com it’s strictly about numerics. They could’ve gotten pinyin but went with numerics. .com=numerics.
They own 360.cn.
We own one word category “killer”names in different extensions re Diamonds Insurance etc but this proves NOTHING beats .com-nothing.