Price comparison company buys Top10.com domain name.
A UK price comparison company has purchased the domain name Top10.com from Idealab for $1 million in cash and equity. The deal included $200,000 in cash, and Idealab will take a 7% stake in the privately held company. As part of the deal Idealab founder Bill Gross will join the advisory board of the buyer, now named Top10.com Media Ltd.
Top10.com Media Ltd. runs mobile phone and broadband comparison sites, which have been rebranded to a main portal at Top10.com. The company says its comparison sites attract 1.5 million UK users a month, and generated £9m revenue during financial year 2009. It employs 20 people, and is privately held by its four founders Tom Leathes, Harry Jones, Alex Buttle, and Andrew Cartland.
Idealab founded GoTo.com in the late 90s, and effectively invented the pay-per-click search market that is the foundation of Google and Yahoo. It is also the force behind domain name parking. The company acquired a number of category killer domain names — many of them at the peak of the dot.com boom — that it is now trying to find a home for. A couple representatives of Idealab attended the DOMAINfest conference in Los Angeles earlier this year.
People love numbered lists. Something psychologically compelling about them. They are really on to something building a product comparison site on such a powerful concept.
I’ve been meaning to develop NumberedLists.com for awhile, it’s on the to do list. 😛
Looks like this same company recently grabbed TopTen.com as well.
I think this is good news for me, I own Top10Places.com 🙂