Seller planned to auction the domain starting at $1.7 million.
Microsoft has acquired the domain name Corp.com for an undisclosed price after the domain’s owner said he was going to start an auction for the domain at $1.7 million. Brian Krebs broke the news.
Mike O’Connor, who has owned the domain name for 26 years, has been vocal about new top level domain names causing “name collisions.” This is when a developer uses a then-non-existent top level domain in their programming. When a top level domain is added to the root, that software might try to send information to the new domain.
His concern was based on owning Corp.com and receiving massive amounts to traffic because Windows computers had a type of name collision with corp.com. It’s a bit different given that corp.com is a second level domain, but the same concept led to lots of leaking data.
While Microsoft has tried to address this over the years, but Corp.com still gets a lot of traffic, O’Connor has said.
It seems like spending a few million dollars was a wise security investment. It will also give Microsoft new data that it can use to understand name collisions.
Mark Thorpe says
Microsoft got a deal, Corp.com is worth more than 1.7 million IMO.
Andrew Allemann says
They might have paid more than that.
Mike says
It was listed non afternic for $1.7M
Mike says
It doesn’t really matter for them petty cash, the name is worth so much more in their hands, congrats right buyer, right sale, everybody wins.
Mtn says
Congrats Mikey!
Snoopy says
Would be very surprised if they paid 7 figures given the seller was actively trying to get it sold.