1. Robin Wauters of TechCrunch.com has confirmed that Microsoft have acquired the premium domain name, Office.com. The purchase price was not disclosed. Microsoft seem to be positioning themselves for a strong move forward after years of playing catch up to Google. Personally, I would like to see Microsoft recapture some of the greatness that opened wide the doors of 1980′s technology and innovation. That is a tall order I know. Practically speaking, Office.com is a logical brand reinforcer for their suite of Microsoft Office products. Premium rules again …  as always.

2. A superb domain name, America.US , has been launched. This premium domain is registered to domain investor & developer Christian Zouzas who owns a high quality portfolio of top domain names. DNJournal.com write that Christian has partnered with a company called Local Matters who developed the site in a revenue sharing arrangement. Local Matters specialize in local search technology, media publishing and search marketing.

The America.US site focus is clearly represented on their homepage, and states …

America.us has hotel, apartment, restaurant, event information and more for cities all across the country.

3. In a drama that just won’t die, the new “Domaining” page was thankfully published at Wikipedia after a time intensive effort by this writer to consolidate lots of domain industry information and links into a single, succinct resource. “Domaining” went live on Wikipedia just a day ago along with appropriate redirects of “domainer” and “domainers” to the domaining page.

Quite sadly, an envy driven troublemaker launched a formal request to have the new domaining page deleted. This individual, despite monumental evidence of domaining as an ongoing industry, posted juvenilish smears and accusations in an attempt to discredit the entire domain name industry.

The process at Wikipedia is bizarre, if not astounding. It’s as if anyone can say anything, and pull the rug out from under any entity with whom they disagree. What is occurring at Wikipedia raises serious questions about the parameters of free speech. Defamation typically applies to harming an individual or a well-defined corporate entity via slander or libel. However, there appears to be no recourse in America for impugning an entire industry, race, or group of people.

And so “domaining” has been attacked. The baseless first weapon of choice appears to begin with calling anyone who registers a domain name a “cybersquatter”. Childish name calling such as this fizzles out very quickly and empty criticism runs its course. Perhaps we as domain name investors & developers should regard this attention as some mark of success.

In the end, the critics of domaining must be ultimately angry with themselves. They don’t have the wherewithal to succeed, to educate themselves beyond their limitations, or to achieve personal honesty. Finger pointing and whining are their stock & trade. A very cheap commodity no doubt.

4. Parents.info sold at Sedo.com for US $8382 earlier this week. This is a nice .info domain name. It appears the name is resolving to a Parent’s Guide with numerous articles on parenting.

Internet Domains