Farewell to 2015.
2015 was a busy year on Domain Name Wire. This is the first of five posts that will examine the top 5 most-trafficked stories of last year.
I should start by saying these weren’t the most-visited of 2015, just the most-visited stories I wrote during 2015. There are some older posts that have staying power. For example, in 2014 I wrote about John Oliver’s 5 .NYC domain names. That post was #1 in 2015.
OK, let’s get started!
Coming in at #5 of 2015’s most-read stories was Google selecting the abc.xyz domain name for its new parent company, Alphabet.
What’s .xyz?
That’s what many people outside the domain name industry asked when Google made the announcement.
Not only did the .XYZ registry (podcast) make a bundle selling the domain name to Google, but it also got an incredible amount of free publicity.
Abc.xyz isn’t a consumer-facing site, but much was made of the company’s selection of .xyz. The domain name is essentially a domain hack, taking the first and last three letters of the alphabet.
The idea to use this domain name likely came from Hooli.xyz, a domain name selected by a fictitious company on the HBO show Silicon Valley. Hooli is a spoof of Google.
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