Why Google Is A Domain Registrar
It's been 18 months since Google became a domain registrar, a move that initially shook up the domain and hosting businesses amid the notion that Google might make domain names available for free. Before long, Google watchers advanced an alternate theory: that Google would use its access to the list of recently sold domains to clean up its search results, resetting a site's PageRank when its domain changes hands.
That theory has now been confirmed, thanks to the sharp-eyes of Kevin Murphy at Texturbation, who noted comments by Google employee (and ICANN chair) Vint Cerf in the recent domain marketplace discussion at ICANN's conference in Marrakech. Here's the cogent excerpt (from a much longer transcript):
VINT CERF: When a domain name has expired, and then it's re-assigned to someone else, what happens to the SOA (Start of Authority) record for that domain name as to its start date? Does that change automatically or does it stay the same or are there circumstances where a domain name changes hands but it doesn't look like it has if you are looking at its birth date?
Posted by RichM 
July 5, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
August 27, 2005
GoogleTalk.com for Sale
With the net buzzing about GoogleTalk, the new IM and voice service from Google, the domain GoogleTalk.com is for sale, with listings at Sedo and AfterNIC. While Google owns the .net and .org TLDs, GoogleTalk.com was registered way back in December 2003 by "mossspot" of Apopka, Florida. Mossspot.com used to registered at that address, but is now owned by North American Internet, LLC of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Google recently recovered several domains based on misspellings of its name.
Posted by RichM August 27, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
July 8, 2005
All Your Typos Are Belong to Google
Search Engine Watch reports that Google has won an arbitration case giving it the rights to the domain names googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com. Arbitrator Paul Dorf found that the owner of the typosquatting domains, Sergey Gridasov, was using the URLs to "direct Internet users to Web sites that attempt to download viruses, trojan horses and spyware to the users’ computers. The disputed domain names contain links to various products unrelated to Google." The full decision is here. Some thoughts from Gary Price at SEW:
It will be worth monitoring to see if the Googlepex will begin asserting their legal rights over other registered domains that either resemble Google or include the word Google in the domain name.Well, that would keep Google's lawyers busy for a very long time. A check at whois.sc finds more than 7,700 registered domains including the phrase "google." That's a lot of work. But the precedent can't be good news for the folks who registered all those domains.
Posted by RichM July 8, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter
May 8, 2005
Report: Google Pays $1 Million for google.cn.com
There are reports via the Search Engine Watch message boards and SEO Roundtable that Google has paid a whopping $1 million to acquire google.com.cn and google.cn. A whois search shows that Google indeed owns both google.cn and google.com.cn, but the listings don't provide any information on when the registrant of record was last changed. There reportedly is widespread coverage of this in China, but not in any English-language media as yet.
Posted by RichM May 8, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter