So apparently we’re in a recession. At least that’s what I hear in the news (or at least I would if they’d ever stop talking about Swine Flue). Evidently, consumer spending is down, earnings are down, profits are down, morale is down, budgets are down, and depression is up.
But don’t let all this negativity trick you into thinking no one’s spending: as TechCrunch reports, the domain name “Ad.com” just sold for $1,400,00.00 to a domain holding company (who likely hopes to sell it for more, in the near/long term future). Basically they paid 140,000 times more than Ad.com likely cost in the first place. That’s right: almost a million and a half dollars for a domain name. Yeah, it’s short and short domains are cool… but this purchase seems ridiculous.
Last year I reported on the sale of Pizza.com at a whoppingly stupid price of $2.6m, but those were different times - way back in 2008 when the New Startup to Silicon Valley Engineer ratio was about 1/1.5 and web 2.0 companies were valued beyond the moon. But in 2009 when even the biggest tech giants are struggling to make a profit, how in the world is a $1.4 million domain name worth the investment?
The argument, as I made last year, is that people don’t just randomly type in URLs, they go to search engines to find them. Hell, people even use Google to search for URLs, instead of just typing them in.
So let’s look at Pizza.com a year after its $2.6m sale… what’s the point of this site!? Ugh. Moving on.
No. You know what, let’s not move on yet. Let’s go back to Pizza.com and look at what they’re doing with a $2.6 MILLION domain. It’s a website, about pizza. With Google ads on the sidebar. Amazing.
Alright, now I really need to move on. How about Googling “Pizza”… it’s a) off the first screen, requiring scrolling b) below news results c) below map results d) below the Wikipedia entry, which is basically as helpful as Pizza.com e) below paid ads. I don’t even want to think about how many paid ads on the word “pizza” you could get for $2.6 million… but I’m sure it would be a more valuable move than spending the lump on a domain.
Here’s what it comes down to: in this economy - when companies are conducting layoffs, dollars are tight, and business are timid to invest - it just bothers me to see money wasted like that.
But who knows, maybe in a few years once the economy is back and the web is roaring, the “domain holding” company that purchased Ad.com will be able to flip it to some other dimwitted entity and then who will look stupid?
From my point of view: both of them… Just one will look stupid and rich. But still stupid.
