Domain Name Sold for Millions

Luke PiWalker writes "The infamous and controversial domain Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for a reported $14 million. Sex.com owner Gary Kremen was unavailable for comment, but a source from Kremen's company, Grant Media, told XBiz that sales for the famous domain name will still be handled through Grant Media's San Francisco offices. While other terms of the acquisition remain unknown, XBiz was able to locate information on the deal through a company called InternetRealEstate.com, which shares office space in Boston with Domain Name Acquisition Group (DNAG), a company that was involved in a lawsuit surrounding the Sex.com domain in September."

Re:Domain name - so 1999

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting that Google uses domain names as one of the key factors of their search algorithm.

Re:expensive sex.

[Flaming Babies]

Well...it wouldn't even make the list on the Top 10: Most Expensive Divorce Settlements [askmen.com].

Wikipedia article

[SecState]

There's some background on the domain name here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex.com [wikipedia.org]

Re:$14 million

[joepeg]

That is called Domain Hijacking. It is actually a common practice. It even happened to Sex.com [wired.com]

A guy named Gary Kremen was apparently one of the first cybersquatters in the early 90's when domains were free. A guy named Stephen Cohen then hijacked Sex.com, and Kremens sued him:

"In November 2000, at the end of a three-year legal battle, a federal judge ruled that Stephen Cohen had stolen the domain by forging a letter from Kremen's company to Network Solutions. Cohen was ordered to return Sex.com to Kremen and pay him $65 million in damages. (Cohen appealed, and in June of this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case.) In the meantime, Cohen had fled the country, so all Kremen got as compensation was this California mansion and a derelict house on the US-Mexico border. Even so, Kremen figured he'd found his winning lottery ticket. Under Cohen, Sex.com had been taking in $500,000 a month selling banner ads to other online porn sites."

No link?

[SamSim]

...And there's no link to sex.com [sex.com] in the story? Good grief.

Re:Domain name - so 1999

[Compulsion]

It's just a trophy domain. Because it's too generic. Think about it, what service can you possibly sell there? I'm being serious. Sex is a highly specific thing with millions of "products", "choices". What would you expect to find at money.com or at drugs.com or at people.com? Nothing but a catch-all umbrella portal for other sites, so why go there and not directly to the specific flavour you're after, which is what a search engine is for anyway. Some poor sucker just paid 13,999,999 dollars too much for nothing useful.

A Trophy domain is exactly what you want. Pay for click banners, AdSense, and favorable linking practices net you, oh, $500,000 a month. It doesn't necessarily work under the old system, but it's a thriving internet business.

In 1995

[n6kuy]

I'm surprised it took that long....

Registrant:
Escom, LLC
ATTN: SEX.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

      Domain Name: SEX.COM

      Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
            Escom, LLC [e-mail] m
            ATTN: SEX.COM
            c/o Network Solutions
            P.O. Box 447
            Herndon, VA 20172-0447
            570-708-8780

      Record expires on 30-Nov-2015.
      Record created on 18-Oct-1995.
      Database last updated on 19-Jan-2006 10:45:31 EST.

      Domain servers in listed order:

      NS5.SEX.COM 198.87.233.72
      NS6.SEX.COM 64.244.252.131

This listing is a Network Solutions Private Registration. Mail
correspondence to this address must be sent via USPS Express Mail(TM) or
USPS Certified Mail(R); all other mail will not be processed. Be sure to
include the registrant's domain name in the address.