discuss Websites sold for millions of dollars that went offline forever

[Jeffrey]

Share websites that you know that were sold for at least 6 figures US$ then went kaput.

I will start.

- Elon Musk's Zip2.com was sold for $307 million to Compaq Computers is now for sale. The domain is now for sale.

- Friendster.com, the first social network was sold for $26.4 million 2009, then shifted into a gaming network, it shutdown in 2015.

 

[koolishman]

Basically running businesses that were purchased along with domain name, gone bust?

 

[Samer]

Jet.com

Now defunct.

 

[Samer]

Basically running businesses that were purchased along with domain name, gone bust?

Jet.com went bust for sure…

Paid $3.3B for the business, includes Domain. $3.3 Billion Only to shut it down in 4 years. Hey, they eliminated a competitor! Miss Jet…

 

[CraigD]

AltaVista

The first really big search engine in the 1990's was bought by Overture Services, Inc. for $140 million, who in turn were quickly taken over by Yahoo! in 2003. The site was shut down in 2013 and the domain name now redirects to Yahoo!

 

[Jeffrey]

Basically running businesses that were purchased along with domain name, gone bust?

Yes. But primarily depends on their website in running the business..

 

[jhm]

Wouldn't be surprised if Musk bought that domain back, like he did with "X" (sentimental reasons)

 

[Samer]

Wouldn't be surprised if Musk bought that domain back, like he did with "X" (sentimental reasons)

Good answer! But It’s priceless domain to him,

He himself admits is attached to the domain.

It was never a business.

 

[Samer]

O.co? Fail rebrand by overstock.com
Possibly, the worst ever imo

They said O.com stole many of O.co’s traffic
(O.com is owned by Verisign)
Another dead one letter.com website! Still

 

[Future Sensors]

O.co? Fail rebrand by overstock.com
Possibly, the worst ever imo

They said O.com stole many of O.co’s traffic
(O.com is owned by Verisign)
Another dead one letter.com website! Still

Verisign is not the owner.

 

[jhm]

Good answer! But It’s priceless domain to him,

He himself admits is attached to the domain.

It was never a business.

Would only take a handful of his Twitter followers to say its for sale, planting a seed in his eccentric head to go get it

 

[twiki]

Here's another story:

GoTo.com was like the first PPC search engine back in the early 2000's. They rebranded to Overture - then GoTo.com redirected to Overture.

Overture then indeed bought AltaVista (yet another unused name today, that redirects to Yahoo).

Then Overture was sold to Yahoo in 2003 for 1.3B. Unclear for me yet what happened with GoTo.com meantime.

Then Yahoo was bought by Verizon. Now Overture redirects to Verizon Media. Which is quite weird if you ask me - it would be far better to build, or sell this brandable name.

Anyway it is clear today that Overture no longer exists - the concept is long dead. I think Yahoo just wanted to buy out a competitor back then. Anyone tried to do the expensive Yahoo Directory listing, ever?

Then GoTo.com was finally bought by LogMeIn in 2018 for just 2.5M and now is a collaboration platform based on LogMeIn services. At least this one does something useful.

 

[mjbenterprises]

Mark Cuban's domain Broadcast.com, which he sold to yahoo for 5.7 billion.. yahoo never did anything with the domain, and now it redirects to yahoo.com

Check out the website from 1999, before Cuban sold it.. it was a really crappy site, even crappy for the time.. I don't know how Cuban managed to sell this awful site for billions of dollars

https://web.archive.org/web/19990208003617/http://broadcast.com/

 

[likemike]

It's all in the name Crypto and salesmanship... not to mention Yahoo really liked the idea and wanted it before anyone else could get it--- DEMAND! Some of us remember it very well. Broadcast.com was before its time.

 

[Lox]

broadcast com wiki

 

[Jeffrey]

It's all in the name Crypto and salesmanship... not to mention Yahoo really liked the idea and wanted it before anyone else could get it--- DEMAND! Some of us remember it very well. Broadcast.com was before its time.

In the early 2000, the time when blogs were sprouting, a business blog managed by a single person was sold for 6 figures.