sales Elon Musk bought back X.com from his second-ever company PayPal

[mems]

Elon Musk bought back the website name from his second-ever company, which he left in 2002.

Way back in 1999, Elon Musk started X.com, his second-ever company.

It was an online bank that would go on to become PayPal. In 2001, he stepped aside, leaving behind both X.com the company and X.com the domain name.

Now, over 16 years later, Musk and X.com are back together: PayPal confirms with Business Insider that Elon Musk has repurchased the X.com domain name.

To be clear, he hasn't purchased PayPal, or even a sliver of PayPal. All he purchased was X.com, a highly-desirable single-letter website address, and he can now do whatever he wants with it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-purchases-xcom-domain-name-2017-7

 

[Chris Rice]

I guess if you don't have x.com, x.company comes in second?

 

[Smooth]

That leaves NGTLD believers astonished.. why waste so much money on a .com? Why not x.crap or x.pigeonshit?! What's wrong with Musk!

 

[xn--v4h.com]

That leaves NGTLD believers astonished.. why waste so much money on a .com? Why not x.crap or x.pigeonsh*t?! What's wrong with Musk!

LOL! x.horse?

 

[xn--v4h.com]

I guess if you don't have x.com, x.company comes in second?

The next coolest I saw was Andrew's no_url_shorteners! @MediaOptions

 

[anantj]

The next coolest I saw was Andrew's no_url_shorteners! @MediaOptions

That's not Andrew but a NP policy to disallow URL shorteners. They replace the domain with the string "no_url_shorteners"

 

[Chris Rice]

That leaves NGTLD believers astonished.. why waste so much money on a .com? Why not x.crap or x.pigeonsh*t?! What's wrong with Musk!

It doesn't leave me astonished. .Com is still the standard bearer for TLDs. The question is if any of the GTLD investors will turn a good profit in the long run and who will if they do and how much profit would it be?

I am wondering if there will be some tension between Musk and Alphabet since their domain names are similar (X.com and X.company).

I think this is one of the reasons why Alphabet renamed Google X to plain X ahead of time. It looks like they beat Musk in to the punch in that regard.