Company acquires existing domain name registrar.
Facebook now owns a domain name registrar.
As spotted by Pinky Brand today, the company has acquired RegistrarSec.
Weekly email report from #ICANN indicates that #FaceBook has acquired a registrar https://t.co/nF6qqUgri2
— Pinky Brand (@pinkybrand) April 14, 2016
The registrar has only a handful of domain names and focuses on brand protection.
Why the acquisition?
It appears RegistrarSec is part of AppDetex, a brand protection company. Michele Neylon, who runs domain name registrar Blacknight, wonders if Facebook acquired AppDetex for some of its mobile app technology.
It’s possible that Facebook could offer domain name registrations to its billions of members. But it could also be an acquihire or technology play.
Notably, Facebook did not apply for the .facebook top level domain name.
It may be to do with this: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/facebooks-fb-f8-developer-conference-142302958.html
Most likely this is a play with FB’s Internet.org. Particularly, their Free Basics platform in which they own the matching dot com.