In a heated bidding war, ToysRUs bought the domain name Toys.com at auction for $5.1 million. ToysRus really wanted the domain, for obvious reasons. Everyone except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A-1 (owner of domains such as free.com, boys.com, girls.com, and divorce.com) bowed out of the auction at $3 million. The last $2 million was just those two companies going back and forth for hours.
ToysRUs really didn’t have much choice. If it wants to be the first thing people associate with toys it really couldn’t afford to allow anyone else to own that domain, even in this economy. Who says real estate is dead?
that is really a lot of money – I think ToysRUs is best suited with that domain anyway, still a lot of money, though.
Frank Schilling bowed at 3 million, He makes over $20 million a year on 300,000 domains, I wonder why he was scared to go more.
who ever owns the greatest strategic natural language domain portfolio will eventually rule the internet and mobile location game.
NaturalLocator.com – speak easy
dude… pass it this way… i need a hit
I wonder if MJ would be the top bidder for boys.com
lmao!
roflmao…
loloolooololol
Maybe Toys.com is super easy to remember, that’s why is a good domain for them I guess.
Thank you for that insightful comment Sherlock Holmes.
agreed
freefreebiefinder.com/
Crazy price for a domain bit Eric is right, they can’t afford for this domain to go into someone else’s hands.
A very good domain buy for ToysRUS. Obviously will be at the top of everyone searching during the holiday seasons, and a big investment if they were to ever sell it. Domain names don’t lose value.
http://www.kisalt.net/hs
Awesome buy for them – the type in alone will pay for itself in under a year.
Cheers – Eric
huh???? Complete waste of money!!!!!!
5 mil for a domain name when they are already established and branded!
Gezz… I’ll sell them a bridge that connects to Marin County… it is a toll road and it’s a money maker.
Then you obviously know nothing of the domain industry.
waldo – you’re an idiot. this is a steal for toysrus
Hi there people,
I own URtwitter.com. If you are working on project around twitter… I promise I will sell it for less than $5 M
i think u put the M as a mistake lol
remove the ‘M’ and you’ve got a deal!
Delete “M”
is there an echo in here
Wow, reminds me of the good ol days!
But in all seriousness, this is one of the rare domains that actually is worth millions. Smart move.
What are generic sub domains on say YouTube worth? Was just looking at a pretty fair collection at http://www.your...emanagement.com
$5m for toysrus to own toys.com indefinitely is a great strategic buy.
I personally like looking at http://f2bb.com its a lot cleaner.
Think it was a great move too. For toysrus to have toys.com indefinitely for $5m is a great strategic investment. Even if its not used, so as competition do not have it.
Agreed
A very good domain buy for ToysRUS. Obviously will be at the top of everyone searching during the holiday seasons, and a big investment if they were to ever sell it. Domain names don’t lose value.
> Domain names don’t lose value.
Sure they do, as new TLDs (.us, .mp, .me, .tv, .mobi, etc) gain popular acceptance, “.com” loses its hegemonic power.
Wishful thinking, but the opposite is actually true. Mainstream public will always revert to the .com. All additional TLD’s do is create confusion making the .com stand taller in the consumers eyes.
hence the .com default tab on ipones for internet search. without a .com companies will always be looking up and wondering what if?
sure there is always new real estate being developed in the suburbs and you could always live there if you want to much cheaper than a big city, but a domain like toys.com is like owning prime real estate in Manhattan. It won’t lose it’s value either because peole will always want to live there
do people say to dial “1-877″ numbers?
no, they do not.
they dial “1-800″ numbers… even though there are a dozen variations
Sex.com’s still champion with about $10 million?:)
Actually it has a sibling fund.com that sold at about the same price.
domains aren’t actually as important as they used to be. No one needs to type in addresses anymore, the accessibility via search engines means that content and users are connected more readily than requiring users to remember your actual domain. It’s a good buy if you can afford to spend on trinkets. But in the same way that the customer doesn’t really care what your postal address is, the customer now doesn’t really care what your domain is.
I bet you have never owned a good generic domain. Launch something around a good domain name and you will realize the value in no time.
what are you smoking??? So a good domain and crap site = pure gold????
Thus shouldn’t Google be out of business by now? What the h@ll is a google?
@cian, doesn’t own ANY good domains, if cian did he would know the truth.
The ONLY internet businesses that are making money today on the internet are the domainers, who only need 2 to 4 people to crank out 5 million a year or more in NET revenue.
Kevin Ham and his empire do over $1 million per week on a bad week.
I’m really surprised to see that everyone thinks this was a good idea? Since when does the URL name have to be so specific to the company.
eBay doesn’t need “auction.com”
Google doesn’t need “search.com”
Amazon doesn’t need “shop.com”
I think most people are a little suspicious of such obvious URLs anyways.
Plus I don’t know anyone (including my mom) that searches by typing directly into the URL…they use Google….so spend the 5.1 million making sure you turn up at the top of Google. Or spend the money on marketing so that people know to Google ToysRUs if they are looking for toys.
Just compare it to paying one time fee of 5 million dollars of an advert that is never going to die and bring in most targeted traffic.
People don’t google search, or auction, like they do google toys – 25 million times. Imagine if someone else owned it.
Smart boy. The only logical response to this silliness.
$5m is a complete waste of money. How much extra profit will this generate compared to if ToysRUs did not own the domain name?
Hard to measure, but probably very little, if any. Thedomain at the top of the Google search for ‘Toys’ won’t ebe determined by the URL. it will be determined by the Pagerank and content. Therefore, it was a waste of money.
This is just another example of how people pay ridiculous valuations for things without substance in the internet business. Some things just don’t change.
with a name like toys.com+ the 30 year established company toyrus you dont need google. why do silly willys think google is so necessary? probably some google seo genuis whos job wont be around in 3-5 years. seo and googl are a joke. universal fixed position natural language location is coming and will change the game.
Toys.com without any content already comes up #4 in google. That would be a great spot for a new upstart. This isn’t just about type-ins.
Keyword domains help a fuck load with seo. If i dont get a good keyword domain for a website, i dont build it.
agreed.
Quote:
eBay doesn’t need “auction.com”
Google doesn’t need “search.com”
Amazon doesn’t need “shop.com”
/END QUOTE
None of those examples contain the domain in the company name like ‘TOYS’ R US so the criticism falls down at the first hurdle.
It’s also not all about functional need, it’s about perception too.
Curious how Dot-Com domains will fair when the Dot-City domains start rolling out in 2010.
great buy. No doubt of that.
Does Amazon own books.com?
actually barnes and nobles owns books.com
The word “toy” is part of their company name too.
Now that’s a good name to own.
currently toy r us shows up second in google results for “toys” behind kbtoys.com. I wonder if owning the fourth ranked domain for a toys search will boost them to the top. on side note, currently toys.com is a dead link, which i find hilarious for a 5 mill domain (yes i realize theres probably some lag time from the purchase but still).
If I was looking for ToysRUs online, I would probably enter toysrus.com. Waste of 5 million for a company having financial problems. Better spend the 5 million on advertising on Google search engine hits.
ToysRUs sounds like a mail order site
http://toysr.us/
dang i wished i had that domain name to sell
Wow. I think that seller should be very rich now. 5.1million! Tat’s really a big amount trade even in this economy.
TODAY,I google toys and found no toys.com as number 1.and then I type in toys.com ,I congratulate my self that I found them with 352 millions searching result.however the site is doesn’t exist yet.and my question is.what happen to the last owner of the domain,do they recklessly put only park domain within the content.well I think they already wasting money then
Wow! This is great for Toys R Us. They really need this to help make their dominance in the toy industry pass up the Wal Marts and Targets of the world.
You’re an idiot.
Some people think Domains are dumb investments.
http://www.goog...SE:C&ntsp=0
$1,000,000 in Citigroup last year @ 55 is now worth $27,271.
when it all about competitions being number 1 is a profit,however after doing some domain transfer techie and technical stuff the out there thing before they can use it and make more profit with ,they will need such a “welcome Party for winning such a Perfect combination Product,vision and search result
I own JapaneseToys.com – anyone interested or should I just launch it this year and dominate anime cartoon market? anyone interested in partnership?
i own bigtoysforyourgayasshole.com – anyone interested in that?
i bet you do
glad they did this, because I am tired of switchin to the Russian keyboard to get that backwards R when I want to go to their site.
funniest thing I’ve read all day
This a truely incredible amount of money to spend on a domain name. Anyone know what the most ever spent on a domain was? or is this the highest?
sex.com went for $12m.
fund.com for $10m.
porn.com $9.5m
diamond.com $7.5m
business.com was the most well-known when it went for $7.5m
What about the new unlimited TLDs that are supposed to be available this year ? Would it not burst that bubble too ?
http://video.go...088027792654614
It’s better we use number to make phone calls. we don’t have to buy a ‘name’ for us. What a lucky!
A lot of money indeed, but what a great domain name for someone who wants to be the leader on toys market. And a good niche anyway.
wipe that dribble from you chin sissy boy
hey eric where is te last.fm apology? you sill at this rag? wait to your sissy boy boss find out.. you gonna get spanking
As was reported previously by TC the domain investment group (Domain Equity) bought iToys.com at the same auction, along with Hobbies.com. With the auction now closed, bids are welcome via brian@domainequity.com or rob@domainstrategies.com.
Erick,
I am requesting a TC article on the status of Programmable Matter which Intel is working on.
http://www.yout...h?v=WZlE4AH3enU
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter
Tech Crunch has never covered this, and this technology seems like the future since it replicates the Star Trek replicator and we all know that the future means whatever was in star trek in the 70s come to life.
Please get somebody from JPL or something’s opinion on programmable matter’s applications for deep space exploration too if you can.
Such as we could easily rocket a programmable matter machine out to Pluto, scan the matter of somebody in a thermal space suit, then beam his information out to the Pluto outpost and create a matter clone of him there.
Perhaps even further than Pluto. If we could travel as information rather than matter, this would open up a lot to human beings spanning the galaxy.
Or for the erotic industry people could whip up their favorite porn star to sleep with on demand, then destroy her when they’re done. OK, I didn’t just say that.
None the less, what an interesting topic, and nothing about it on TC.
I’m aware that this material is not like regular atomic matter. BUT, future iterations will no doubt allow atomic matter and molecular structures to be reproduced from information.
I also know you can’t create matter on any efficient scale. right now anyhow. This CAD nano-material is only the first step in the right direction.
If on the off chance you do cover this, please also explore us sending this tech to alternate dimensions.
The CERN large hadron colider is trying to explore alternate dimensions by taking a snapshot of subatomic particles, to try to find a missing graviton(that travels to another dimension)
If we get this working to at least produce functional CAD matter machines(using it to create working robots), we could use it to send ourselves into alternate universes as well this universe.
good
Good move by toysrus.
Very Good move by Toysrus
So who will buy pets.com? It has such high name recognition and a funny puppet also!!!!! Step up toysrus and branch out to the pet market!!!
One major point to all of those people who are saying that it is a poor investment and a waste of money. It’s one that will appreciate in value. A-1 will snap that domain up for $5M at any time. Domains are assets, ones that can be bought and resold over and over. Try re-selling selling your advertising buys from five years ago. You can’t. If this was a spec purchase from a domainer it might be something that a board might sneer at, but the fact that it was a heated auction that it was purchased from ensures that it was a smart investment. And one that establishes an immediate value.
We paid a premium for our domain even though it’s a .net. While we’re building out our product, we work on SEO and we’ll be able to jump to the top of the engines and not have to spend $40+ per click to pay for top placing in Google.
Good move by Toys R’ Us. Now if A-1 would get off of their asses and actually do something with their portfolio.
well it looks to me that toys are far from economy down term
Best buy any day for ToysRUs .
it really couldn’t afford to allow anyone else to own that domain
Huh. So you mean they would have bought this even if it was say 100 million$ ?
The only right criteria for evaluating a business purchase should be return-on-investment. It is the specific valuation of that domain which counts here instead of a vague “i want this domain – at any cost”. I’m sure ToyeRUs paid this price with a very calculated reason.
Wow ToysRUs must be confident the eco crisis is going to becoming to an end soon, Hope they don’t ask for a governement bail out a few months from now.
$7m spent on domains in February…
i love making free hot money just by buying domain.
can only get into this kind of situation if you start this in the early 90
Wow, big number but a great pick up and will surely pay off in the long run.
One major point to all of those people who are saying that it is a poor investment and a waste of money???
In terms of traffic & revenue, it may not add much to the bottomline of Toysrus. But, they have eliminated a potential competitor with this purchase.
That is a great amount of money..nice.
It adds a massive string to their marketing bow and certainly elimates the possibility of competition snapping it up. A great asset for them to have on board, and contrary to the other comments I think it will add quite a bit to their bottom line if utilised in the correct way. For a leader in the toy industry you can’t get your hands on a better domain name.