sales Huge Domains sells Knewz.com to News Corp

Recons.Com said:

I'd never belittle express.news, seriously. I like that name. As I said, it is probably top 50 .news name.

I'd start a project on that, just I would on LNews. But, if I had budget of $1MM, I'd allocate around 10% of that to go for something else, that is all I am saying. And, also, that they already might have prerequisite to look for .com. Do you know of any project by a major telecom company that is not in .com, .org or cctld?

new gtlds don't compete with my names, period. If anything, they help sell them at higher price, when a startup realizes how much educating of its customers, partners etc. is involved.

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Well, It is little bit USA-cetric view you have imo. I get it, in USA .com is everything. Here in Europe though .com is not so popular, and in some coutries we almost do not use it at all - we use our national ccTLDs, like .fr, .nl or .cz in 99% of cases.

So someone can start their brand with .com, but quite often they find that if they want to expend here, they need to secure their brand in national ccTLDs of respective country as well. And if that is a good/popular string they are after, they can have problem purchasing such domain names in all those ccTLDs (they are taken, developed by competitors, etc). So what many companies then do ? Oh, they ... REBRAND.

If you have nice new gTLD name, all problems with getting your brand in national ccTLDs are gone from the very start. You basically need only 1 domain name for all countries, that is all. New gTLDs are not geo limited.

So it is much better to have domain name like Express.News if you want go really global (plus in case of need you can create webpages as USA.Express.News or Asia.Express.New, all for free, if you want to differentiate content), comparing to the situation when you would start with name like expressnews.something, and then needed to buy also .pl, .fr, .be, .hu .czk, etc versions of the name in the process of expansion to those countries. Just sayin

lolwarrior said:

Sure, but the domain name is express.news, not expressnews / co.uk or expressnews / uk.
That is the beauty of new gTLDs, they are not limited to certain geo location or country, as ccTLDs, they are trully international.

Express News is a common semantic string in English language. It is the same as if someone trademarked common string "unhappy love" in USA, someone else in UK, someone else in Germany and someone else in Denmark...it does not mean 5th company can not operate domain name Unhappy.Love. "Express News" is the same as "Unhappy Love" in this aspect, those are both common and frequently used expressions in English language

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Yes, but putting trademark law aside, why would News Corp use a name that's confusingly similar to a rival in one of their markets, even if it were generic? They publish The Sun and The Times in the UK - two of the biggest newspapers, while Express Newspapers publish the Daily Express and The Star. I don't mean to rain on your parade (and I could be wrong ), but I don't think they'd use anything with 'express' in the name.

cooljub said:

Yes, but putting trademark law aside, why would News Corp use a name that's confusingly similar to a rival in one of their markets, even if it were generic? They publish The Sun and The Times in the UK - two of the biggest newspapers, while Express Newspapers publish the Daily Express and The Star. I don't mean to rain on your parade (and I could be wrong ), but I don't think they'd use anything with 'express' in the name.

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You are not "raining on my parade", it is a discussion!

But your notion of legal term "confusingly similar" is not correct - I wil try to explain it, using example of previously mentioned domain name Unhappy.Love - for example, imagine there is company in Denmark, using name Unhappy.dk, with slogan "No more Unhappy Love", running large dating portal, well know all over the Denmark, with 30 years of history. Everyone knows it there. Still, they would have very hard time to prove that Unhappy.dk is confusingly sumilar to global brand Unhappy.Love (would the like to get Unhappy.Love via such claim), as just the fact they have "Unhappy Love" in their slogan and they and their domain name are well know in whole Denmark, does not mean they have GLOBAL rights on common term "Unhapy Love" which everyone uses worldwide daily. This is simply not possible, and in addition Unhappy.dk is not confusingly similar to Unhappy.Love, and Unhappy.dk applies only on Danish market while Unhappy.Love is totally not geo neutral, can be used in any country - so it is apples and oranges here.

But ... if you have domain names like Unhappy.dk and UnhappyLove.dk, and both companies are active in "love" industry in Denmark, the chances of one company claiming some rights over another company is much larger. Now you compare here apples to apples. And you see this every year in dozens of UDPRs, where some companies want to get nice .com names (sorry, but that is the reality, most ugly legal battles atm are for valuable .com names), exactly based on claims of "confusingly similar" stories, etc. This imo is one of the big disadvantages in investing in high value .com names - you never know, when someone "clever" will get the idea that they can get your name via UDRP or some other legal proces - ask .com investors with large portfolios of valuable .com names, and they will tell you this is the case.

So if you want to go truly GLOBAL and SAFE, safest way also from TM point of view is to choose strong, very common new gTLD expression, which is common/frequent in English laguage), where probability that someone can sucessfully claim that global name via legal process (because they run some similar local business in their nation or town or local community, etc) goes almost to 0.

Above was a general remark about "confusingly similar", and I do not know any details about companies mentioned in this thread which are in UK- but what I know for sure, there are hundreds of suitable end users for name like express / news from all over the world, and sooner or later someone clever will buy it and build a global portal on it

lolwarrior said:

Got it, much easier to remember knewz.com then express.news ... express.news is new gTLD and just impossible to remember for you

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I have nothing against your investments, I think gLTDs are the second choice. So, unless it's forced, nobody would like to have a second choice domain.

I think so because I have been creating sites for years and I am often forced to register a gLTD because I have no budget to buy the .com (gLTDs are my second choice, as they are for everyone).

"Second choice" does not mean that they have no value.

Knews.com is superbly better, IMO.

Warning shameless domain plug alert ...... .com

A lot of interesting proposals and comments. I admit I am not keen on the name, and had it been mine not convinced I would renew it. I wish we knew more about their process. Did they hire naming experts? Did they go only to Huge and saw what they had and chose one. Apparently the name has been used in past for a news aggregator, so it has now been picked twice. The knew part is a little cute.
Bob

lolwarrior said:

If you have nice new gTLD name, all problems with getting your brand in national ccTLDs are gone from the very start. You basically need only 1 domain name for all countries, that is all. New gTLDs are not geo limited.

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I agree with your reasoning but how would using a new gtld avoid this challenge for strong ccTLD oriented countries?

Using unhappy.love, you would still need to secure all the unhappylove.cctld domains. So instead of using unhappy.love you might just as well use unhappylove.com + ccTLDs.

NameDeck said:

I agree with your reasoning but how would using a new gtld avoid this challenge for strong ccTLD oriented countries?

Using unhappy.love, you would still need to secure all the unhappylove.cctld domains. So instead of using unhappy.love you might just as well use unhappylove.com + ccTLDs.

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You are totally correct, I agree, in strong ccTLD oriented countries, no matter if you start with new gTLD or .com as your main brand, it is always great to secure your brand in respective ccTLDs as well (no matter if you later use them as your main domain name for that country, or just as a redirect to you main domain name).

So what I was trying to demonstrate really (maybe little bit clumsily) is that if you are Danish company and start with ccTLD like unhappylove / dk, and want to expand your business later to, lets say, UK , and find out that you can not get unhappylove / co.uk from whatever reason (domain owner not contactable, price very high, already developed, etc), it is pretty difficult spot to be for a company (and when that happens in several coutries you want to expand, usually you need to rebrand then, or opt for some worse domains, like gounhappylove / co.uk. So many companies choose to rebrand in this spot, particularly in early stages). This can be avoided when you start with new gTLD from the very start, because in worst case, when unhappylove / co.uk is not available, you can use your main domain Uhhappy.Love for you UK customers and be done with it. Of course, someone can tell that you can use your .com name in UK as well (and in the case of UK that is 100% correct), but in many coutries in Europe, we just do not use .com names as primary choice - so it is then up for a discussion really what company will choose, if .com version of their brand, or new gTLD in this case.

Ideally, company should imo secure all 3 versions of their brand in domains, which is a) new gTLD (usually if their brand is 2 worder and last word is as well new gTLD extension), b) .com version of their brand and c) respective ccTLD versions of their brand, to be fully covered for future whatever their expansion plans are.

lolwarrior said:

You are totally correct, I agree, in strong ccTLD oriented countries, no matter if you start with new gTLD or .com as your main brand, it is always great to secure your brand in respective ccTLDs as well (no matter if you later use them as your main domain name for that country, or just as a redirect to you main domain name).

So what I was trying to demonstrate really (maybe little bit clumsily) is that if you are Danish company and start with ccTLD like unhappylove / dk, and want to expand your business later to, lets say, UK , and find out that you can not get unhappylove / co.uk from whatever reason (domain owner not contactable, price very high, already developed, etc), it is pretty difficult spot to be for a company (and when that happens in several coutries you want to expand, usually you need to rebrand then, or opt for some worse domains, like gounhappylove / co.uk. So many companies choose to rebrand in this spot, particularly in early stages). This can be avoided when you start with new gTLD from the very start, because in worst case, when unhappylove / co.uk is not available, you can use your main domain Uhhappy.Love for you UK customers and be done with it. Of course, someone can tell that you can use your .com name in UK as well (and in the case of UK that is 100% correct), but in many coutries in Europe, we just do not use .com names as primary choice - so it is then up for a discussion really what company will choose, if .com version of their brand, or new gTLD in this case.

Ideally, company should imo secure all 3 versions of their brand in domains, which is a) new gTLD (usually if their brand is 2 worder and last word is as well new gTLD extension), b) .com version of their brand and c) respective ccTLD versions of their brand, to be fully covered for future whatever their expansion plans are.

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Got ya. Totally agree with you. In my country not owning the cctld of your brand definitely is a major issue.

I recently purchased some new TLDs as they make a perfect match to my .com and .ccTLD.

So let's use unhappy.love as an example. I would own the domains unhappylove.com, unhappylove.cctld and unhappy.love.

Imo (and I'm not even a huge ngtld fan) unhappy.love would make the best domain as a primary site. I'm thinking of forwarding the .com and .ccTLD to the .love and also catch all mail at the other TLDs to forward to the .love.

Truth is, doesn't this concept kind of prove using a ngtld on its own isn't good (best) practice? Also, where does it end? If I want to expand to let's say another country I would still need to buy the other ccTLDs as well which could add up quite a bit.

That being said, in most eu countries where the .ccTLD is king people are very well aware of .com/net/org and it doesn't look strange to them. Most other new TLDs do.

So basically, I like new g's as they look cool but in essence they aren't very practical in usage for most things that are public facing and intended to serve a wide public.

I think fine and looking good knewz why all giving bad remarks about it.