sales Nissan sells Z.com to GMO for $6.8 million

[NPer]

"GMO Internet, operator of Japan’s largest domain name registrar, has acquired the one letter domain name Z.com for JPY800 million ($6.8 million), the company announced today.
Japanese car manufacturer Nissa sold the domain name, which it previously used to promote its Nissan Z car.

GMO says it’s going to use the domain name, one of only three single letter .com domains available, to accelerate its global market expansion:


As one of only three single-character domain names currently existing in the .com space, Z.com is highly memorable and offers unparalleled marketing opportunity. With over 100 million registrations, .com is one of the most instantly recognizable and easily identifiable domains in the world. Z.com was acquired to spearhead GMO Internet Group global growth strategy, and securing “Z” under the .com Top Level Domain, provides the Group with a powerful tool to build a strong global brand."​

Read More: http://domainnamewire.com/2014/11/21/wow-nissan-sells-z-com-domain-name-to-gmo-for-6-8-million/

 

[Joseph Green]

Literally one of the most rare assets on the entire planet. I can't believe they sold it. I think Nissan is going to look back on this sale as one of their biggest mistakes.

 

[RU]

Nissan make a big mistake IMO

 

[FPForum]

Awesome sale I have to say...But, I'm curious why there are only 3 one-letter .COMs?

 

[Joseph Green]

I'm curious why there are only 3 one-letter .COMs?

Verisign, the registry of .com, started reclaiming all of the ones that expired. Hard to believe, but people let them expire over the years and Verisign prevented anyone else from buying them.

They did the same with two-letter .com's (LL.com's).

I believe their concerns were that they are too short and people would end up on them by mistake. Also, that people might confuse them with ccTLDs: there was a time when most people would type ".com" at the end of everything, including domains.

Example: A person wants to visit Twitch.TV, but they type in Twitch.TV.com instead because that's what they were trained to do ("add .com at the end") and that would take them to TV.com's website instead of Twitch.TV's website.

 

[RU]

Domainindex says $21,500,000
I totally agree with him!

http://domainindex.com/domains/z.com

 

[Joseph Green]

More details from TheDomains.com:

GMO Internet [is] also an applicant for several new gTLD’s including .Shop and .Inc and is running the .Tokyo; .NAGOYA and .OSAKA new gTLD registries on behalf of each of those cities and .GMO as well.

They clearly understand this industry and the value of domains a lot better than Nissan.

 

[Keith]

What a mistake by Nissan!

 

[pranker]

killer domain name. wow. on the webpage in japanese, it says they're rebranding to z for global expansion.

"Z" has a meaning, such as cutting-edge and last, highest and ultimate. "X", "Y" of the coordinate axes, it is possible to join the "Z" axis, 3-dimensional space (three-dimensional) is born from the two-dimensional (plane). We provide through the advanced, best service "Z.com",
is more convenient the world, will create the excitement with your smile.

 

[FusionSpy]

Nissan did a huge mistake imo - as one of the rarest .com domains you can buy 6.8m seems more than a bargain and whoever green-lit this deal clearly doesn't have any ideas about domains ...

 

[pranker]

Nissan did a huge mistake imo - as one of the rarest .com domains you can buy 6.8m seems more than a bargain and whoever green-lit this deal clearly doesn't have any ideas about domains ...

this is the company that failed to lock down nissan.com early on, and still doesnt own it because theyre cheap skates.

 

[FusionSpy]

Maybe now they will be able to afford it although they should just rebrand Nissan to Z altogether sounds better and easier to brand just looking at the letter Z makes you wanna grab it

this is the company that failed to lock down nissan.com early on, and still doesnt own it because theyre cheap skates.

 

[Joseph Green]

this is the company that failed to lock down nissan.com early on, and still doesnt own it because theyre cheap skates.

I forgot all about that! Nissan Motor vs. Nissan Computer

They're just full of wise decisions, aren't they?

 

[DnEbook]

Datsun is Nissan, many models end in Z
~

 

[pranker]

I forgot all about that! Nissan Motor vs. Nissan Computer

They're just full of wise decisions, aren't they?

nissan vs nissan is the reason why every domainer should hate nissan with a passion. instead of buying the domain name like a normal person, they didnt wanted to frivolously sue the little guy until they he was out of money for legal fees.

 

[anhnguyenict]

great sale!

 

[N-A]

I can say the Yen rate fluctuation may be one reason why they needed the funds by liquidating an unnecessary asset. This is because they need to compete with a global market. There was once a time where $1 USD equaled $0.74 in local currency, hurting many businesses that dealt outside Japan.

Since then, the Bank of Japan has been correcting it and it is now $1 USD = $1.17 JPY, which is excellent (but not the highest I've seen), supposing most of your income is in USD or another foreign currency and you live and reside in Japan.

There are only 3, 1 letter grandfathered .com domain names: Q, X and Z.

Nissan has a popular car in Japan named the Fairlady Z, which is seen roaming the streets almost everywhere (next to the Toyota 86) these days. Since Z hasn't resolved for years, they were losing sales left and right in my opinion. Even though it's not targeted, we can all make assumptions that it has a lot of type-ins. Of these, how many could have resulted in a lead for a Nissan car dealership around the world?

GMO got a great price for a 1 in 3 domain name, selling for less than most LL.com domains.

With that being said, we must all keep in mind that GMO is a Japanese company as is Nissan. This could be very well more of a "loan" (as there are domain owner financing companies now) until something is concrete on why GMO acquired Z is released. Until then, it's a great price. However, we won't know what is ultimately going to happen with this domain except to speculate.

FYI, if you do not have adequate virus protection, do not visit Z as malware was detected and blocked by AVG, even though Page Speed shows it as a parked landing page of "Z.com" with GMO's name on it.

 

[DU]

So it's one letter .com. That gives it rarity but so what? This an auto business not a domain collector.

So what was it really worth? Everyone is acting like it was a huge mistake but it's in the Top 10 sales (public) released for domain only. It's not an asset that has a true market defined value. Maybe they could have got more, maybe not. They obviously felt they didn't need it and thought it was a decent sale.

Nissan I think is majority held by Renault this days, isn't it?

Since then, the Bank of Japan has been correcting it and it is now $1 USD = $1.17 JPY, which is excellent (but not the highest I've seen), supposing most of your income is in USD or another foreign currency and you live and reside in Japan.

Deal was 800 million -you're missing a couple of decimals $1 = 117JPY

Nissan has a popular car in Japan named the Fairlady Z, which is seen roaming the streets almost everywhere (next to the Toyota 86) these days. Since Z hasn't resolved for years, they were losing sales left and right in my opinion. Even though it's not targeted, we can all make assumptions that it has a lot of type-ins. Of these, how many could have resulted in a lead for a Nissan car dealership around the world?

It is interesting in that they are still making the Z-series cars with a new Z coming soon and they still sold it. It's always been a redirect from what I can tell. I used to like the old Z but didn't like the last series. I don't know that I would ever type in Z for a car though. I'm likely to go to a dealership of type Nissan Z35 into google.

I think domainers overvalue the type-in when you're a fully established brand with millions in marketing. Two different models.

Dick Schwartz once claimed Barnes and Noble were better than Borders because they owned Books.com.... and all his flock agreed.

 

[equity78]

Verisign, the registry of .com, started reclaiming all of the ones that expired. Hard to believe, but people let them expire over the years and Verisign prevented anyone else from buying them.

They did the same with two-letter .com's (LL.com's).

I believe their concerns were that they are too short and people would end up on them by mistake. Also, that people might confuse them with ccTLDs: there was a time when most people would type ".com" at the end of everything, including domains.

Example: A person wants to visit Twitch.TV, but they type in Twitch.TV.com instead because that's what they were trained to do ("add .com at the end") and that would take them to TV.com's website instead of Twitch.TV's website.

Not Verisign ICANN

There is actually a wikipedia page dedicated to this, On December 1, 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved the remaining single-letter and single-digit domain names. The few domains that were already assigned were grandfathered in and continued to exist.

Let’s take a look at the existing 1 letter names out in the wild:

The first one is the only one with ties to the domainer community. Thunayan K. Al-Ghanim and his Future Media Architects owns i.net. The website has not been updated for awhile, “I.NET is a registrar that manages the domain inventory of Future Media Architects, Inc.” FMA does not have most of its names registered there any longer. The original registrant was INet Solutions Ltd.

You can read the rest here, and now there are 7 one letter domains in com/net/org as WordPress acquired W.org under the radar

 

[Joseph Green]

@equity78

Thanks for the information.

I haven't researched this in depth, but from what I can tell, the story isn't all that complete. Wikipedia's community isn't satisfied with the validity of the page written on it, and I found a few inconsistencies with it myself.

"Two-letter .com domain names were never reserved" (Wikipedia).

ICANN Additional Second-Level Reservations (26 April 2001):

All two-character labels shall be initially reserved. The reservation of a two-character label string shall be released to the extent that the Registry Operator reaches agreement with the government and country-code manager, or the ISO 3166 maintenance agency, whichever appropriate.The Registry Operator may also propose release of these reservations based on its implementation of measures to avoid confusion with the corresponding country codes.

cm.com is reserved today, but I don't know which organization is behind its reservation.

 

[jdab]

Awesome sale I have to say...But, I'm curious why there are only 3 one-letter .COMs?

Stability concerns, apparently.

 

[N-A]

Nissan I think is majority held by Renault this days, isn't it?

It's a publicly traded corporation with the global headquarters being in Japan. It is also traded on the Nikkei and just made Bloomber's losers list. All of the founders are Japanese.

The current Japan-based Nissan CEO is held by the position of the Paris-based CEO of Renault. The Alliance that they formed has helped Nissan stay strong and make strategic business decisions around the world.

Deal was 800 million -you're missing a couple of decimals $1 = 117JPY

For those unaware that $1 is converted into cents, I made it easier to imagine. You are correct, $1 equals 117 Yen, but has the buying power of $1.17 in the local market. Having said that, many industries are still higher in price. Take a 4K television, it's going to be (once converted) $4000 sold and manufactured by a Japanese company. However, the same television is going to be $1500 in the United States. No dilution of sales in Japan having this system.

So what was it really worth? Everyone is acting like it was a huge mistake but it's in the Top 10 sales (public) released for domain only. It's not an asset that has a true market defined value. Maybe they could have got more, maybe not. They obviously felt they didn't need it and thought it was a decent sale.

It's worth 0 to them to hold and do nothing with. It's not an asset to them. However, when a company liquidates, they look at everything that can sell which are the office supplies to vehicles (two different accounts).

However, they should have taken account of past domain sales for a nicer figure. Although, presumably because both companies that participated in this deal don't do business that way, I at least can safely assume it was not necessary to do.

To domain investors, it is an asset. As all domains are inventory and without them, we cannot function. Otherwise, you're a service company selling domain names you don't own to reduce your liability (brokerage, registrars, etc.).

 

[mad409]

I think it's a pretty sweet sale in today's economy. I wonder how much this press will drive up pricing for one letter gTLDS? I've seen a few listed at outrageous prices already, with the same renewal fee each year.

I bet they're going up as I'm typing..

 

[N-A]

I think it's a pretty sweet sale in today's economy. I wonder how much this press will drive up pricing for one letter gTLDS? I've seen a few listed at outrageous prices already, with the same renewal fee each year.

I bet they're going up as I'm typing..

Better get in, while the going's good then.

 

[mad409]

Better get in, while the going's good then.

Hard to find within my budget, have stumbled upon three decent ones. Even before this came out they started going up in price along with many being held, probably for big bucks later. I am a fan of one letter anything especially when I can find it at normal reg, fee or just slightly higher in price.

I don't recall the extension but seen one the other night at $55,000 reg. and $55,000 renewal. Ouch!