A story in paidcontent.org today tells the tale of the domain LiveSearch.com.
According to the story, Microsoft’s failure to acquire the domain, may have lead it to abandon its live.com search for Kumo.com.
Apparently the owner of the domain LiveSearch.com turned down a $200K offer and demanded $800K. Although no one will confirm that the $200K offer came from Microsoft, if they could have bought the domain for $800K and left live.com in place instead of rebranding their search platform as Kumo.com, wouldn’t they have been way ahead?
The owner of domain LiveSearch.com seems happy holding and parking the domain saying:
“”It makes me plenty of money sending all that Microsoft business to Google”
The owner of LiveSearch.com may eventually wish he took that 200K. Saying this: “It makes me plenty of money sending all that Microsoft business to Google” may not be the smartest thing to do. There are more than a few UDRP arbitrators who wouldn’t look too kindly upon that statement.
David
Microsoft doesn’t have a claim. For one they don’t have a trademark on the term live search, there is one trademark but its was just obtained a couple of years ago by a third party.
Second the guy owned the domain for 13 years or at least 10 years before Microsoft owned live.com or launched its live search service.
I think the domain owner is on solid legal ground and Microsoft should have counted at $500K or $600K, bought the domain and left the service as live.com or livesearch.com instead of coming up with Kumo.com
If the guys wants to rub it in Microsoft’s face, I say good for him.
Mike:
There have been some dopey decisions that have come down from UDRP arbitration lately. Did you read the Deacom.com case? Besides the fact that the Respondent had the name since 1997 (and the Complainant didn’t trademark it until 2006), you’ll love the arbitrator’s logic in taking the name away: “The Panel agrees with Complainant’s assertion that Respondent has not utilized the disputed domain name in an active manner.”
Admitting that you know you’re redirecting someone else’s business (and thrilled about it to boot) is incredibly foolhardy to say the least. The one predictable thing about UDRP arbitrators is that they can be totally unpredictable.
It’s my opinion that the speculation in that article, is just B.S. without any decent grounds to base it on.
It says: “and perhaps contributed to its decision to consider renaming the search engine” – which seems pointless to say.
If Microsoft believed that the domain was important enough, for them to rename their search engine should they not have it, surely they would’ve paid the $800K. Especially since they’re willing to throw ~$100 million at an advertising campaign to gain search market share: http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-to-throw-100-million-at-their-search-market-share-problem-17189
Also consider that Microsoft did buy up a lot of the live.CcTld’s.. I don’t think they got them for free either.
And btw. I checked livesearch.com on a bunch of the tools that estimate traffic, and according to them the domain barely has any traffic. So it’s probably not such a big problem when it’s so insignificant compared to traffic live search already has.
I’d have to agree with David on this. The panelists are making some of the dumbest and misguided decisions these days.
It’s so out of hand now with the NAF, WIPO, lawyers, panelists, etc…. making a bunch of money by handing domain real estate as a gift from one party to another over a trumped up UDRP “complaint”, that almost any action you take can conceivably be used against you for the sake of feeding the “UDRP machine”……so to speak.
Agree with David. I think this guy is gonna regret it… Who else besides MSFT is interested in LiveSearch.com to the tune of $200,000? This would sell at a domain auction for less than $20,000 most likly. 10x from an end user is good. He might have missed a great opportunity.
We hear so many comments about how end users just don’t know what a good domain is worth but the bottom line is that if someone wont pay it it aint worth it…
LiveSearch.com had 1 high quality end user, and he just burned that bridge… tough.
I hope he is making a lot of money sending traffic to Google.
Looks like prospects to sell “Live Search” are dead.
Looks like LiveSearch.com is currently down. I think this guys’s got trouble coming if MS wants to. The only reason why anyone would ask $800k for livesearch.com is becasue of the value that MS added to it by creating live.com. Without live.com, LiveSearch, although not a bad domain, isn’t an $800k domain and that may spell out bad faith to the wrong arbitrator, especially given the guys comments and so on.
Its one of those names, which the end user should have secured prior to releasing its product.
Who else but CNN would have been interested in ireport.com? So if you use the same logic, Rick should taken a much lower amount for that domain.
I’m sure he turned down lower offers which got CNN up to $750K for ireport.com, however if they stopped at say $200K and said no to the $750K asking price then would you be saying Rick made a error in turning down the $200K? Sure but they went higher and Rick made another great deal.
This guy was trying the same thing, but Microsoft made a bad decision and walked away. This doesn’t make the domain holders decision to turn down $200K a bad one, its a negotiation and you don’t know what the other parties going to end up and you can’t go back.
Microsoft has a history of missing the boat regarding domains. Nonetheless they are in a position where they can afford such mistakes and don’t need so called category killer domains.
I agree Michael,
Microsoft are a mulit-billion dollar company who employ some of the smartest people in the world but for some reason they have not aquired this domain before an international annoucement.
It just seems crazy to me? They know about the domain business to a degree, they have paid well in the past to get certain names so why not pay for this maybe not $800k but I would suspect both parties could have discussed this and come to an agreement.
But well who are we, Im sure that in a few month someone on either side will secure the sale.
I say $500k would be a fair price from both parties IMO
Regards,
Robbie
He should have taken that money or at least counter with around $500K because no one except Microsoft can use this word. Do you think any other company like Google e.t.c. will ever go for that name? It’s impossible because of trademark/copyright issues. Plus the domain itself isn’t getting much traffic and its Alexa rank is 5.88 million which is nothing so he should have taken the offer.
Unless Microsoft offers him again some time later, this domain will sit as it is.
This guy does not have the “SPECIAL negotiating power” Rick has.
The key to selling a domain name for millions is to learn some “special negotiation strategy” with some “out of the box business deal”.
In that way, the end user will feel like its a win win situation, and they are willing to fork out that money.
Sad to say, 95% of all domainers does not have these special powers, and I am one of them. 🙁
I hope that the successful 5% domainers will step up, and share their negotiation skills.
Listen David If by some remote chance you are reading my blog. Who cares, LiveSearch.com is ready to become an amazing dating site..Change your marketing strategy asap. The Traffic you are getting is low compare to your new direction. Good Luck! william
Benson
No one I know, has the negotiating skills that Rick possesses, including myself.
That being said you still need the other party to possess the smarts to know there are certain properties they must acquire. Microsoft Live.com product is a $100M+ venture. To radically change it, rather than spending 800K (they probably could have gotten it for $500-$600K) its just foolish.
Cnn.com could have walked from ireport.com as well and just made it as a cnn.com/ireport leaving Rick with a domain no one else would buy.
Cnn.com was smart.
Microsoft was not.
Geist and others have criticised UDRP for the decisions it makes, the case law that they use (based on defaulting non-respondents) and the panel allocation.
“It makes me plenty of money sending all that Microsoft business to Google”
This statement makes it sound like he thinks there is confusion which he is making money from. I think he should take care…
Not many people have ever accused Microsoft of making good decisions.
Heck they don’t even own http://InternetExplorer.com . How long has that been around? Twelve years or so.
First mover companies who got too big and too stupid and lost their way…
GM, AOL, Palm, AIG, Yahoo and of course Microsoft.
according to pc world kumo may be done also.
bing is the new term?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/165462/microsoft_may_rename_live_search_bing_massive_ad_campaign_planned.html
livesearch.com? You actually think that they are changing the name of the search engine because they could not but that domain? That domain has close to no traffic, and has nothing to do with them re-branding the search engine. They have hundreds of in house council and if they wanted that domain they would at least try to get it. They have not made an attempt to get it. You think ask.com should re-brand since they do not own asksearch.com?
Agree with “B”, rebranding for not getting a domain? No way……. Imagine the effort they’ve spent in acquiring all the important gTLD and ccTLD’s for Kumo, it’s not a small exercise. If they really want livesearch.com, they would have got it. I just can’t see why MS would want livesearch.com
OK, first, can someone tell me why MS is abandoning Live.com which is a better domain than LiveSearch.com, Kumo.com, Bing.com?
Second, if I’m MS, I’d spend the $5Million or so it probably will take to get Search.com from CBS and pay $100K-1M for 411.com. The numbers are not meant to be exact since MS isn’t short on cash and can match any asking price. Those 2 domains are instantly synonymous with looking for info. They can brand around one and redirect the other one. There would almost be no need for marketing their search engine ever again. Forget about LiveSearch.com, Kumo,com, Bing.com, etc…
Tony, my guess is: Live.com is bad because it’s generic, Search.com is bad because it’s generic.
Haven’t domainers realized that big companies just won’t use .com as their brands???
Google, Facebook, YouTube…would they every consider Search.com, Friend.com, Video.com? Not in a hundred years!!!
Generic domains are for those who don’t know how to do marketing, who can’t create brands from nothing!
My reply to MDB did not go through…
2nd time this has happened in the last day…