Tencent Acquires QQ.co + More Domain Movers

I have been slacking on posting Domain Movers lately but my son has been sick for a week and now I’m sick. This cuts down on my research time and results in less activity. Sorry about that.

Here is a very small sample of some recent company focused domain name transactions detected:

Google LLC has appeared in whois records for Gradient.com. The domain name was acquired in an expired GoDaddy.com auction for $125,001 as reported by DomainInvesting.com. Anna Patterson of Gradient Ventures appeared in whois shortly after the auction and then the domain moved to whois privacy. Anna is the founder and managing partner of Gradient Ventures, which is Google’s new AI venture fund. The domain also transferred to corporate domain registrar MarkMonitor, out of GoDaddy when Google appeared in whois records.

Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. registered JoinTheSalute.com adding to the nearly 2,000 other domain names owned by the company. They also registered several Craftsman related domains for the brand they acquired from Sears. Those included: CraftsmanPride.com, CraftsmanGarage.com, CraftsmanHeritage.com, CraftsmanLove.com, CraftsmanBuildsPride.com and CraftsmanAmericana.com.

Park ‘N Fly (PNF.com) has acquired ParkingReservations.com out of GoDaddy’s NameFind investment domain portfolio for an undisclosed amount. (likely mid $x,xxx) The company offers airport parking, which allows parking reservations and shuttle services for customers.

Kellogg Company has acquired LeafJerkey.com, adding to the 2,100 other domain names owned by the company.

Convergence Chemicals Private Limited has acquired its acronym, CCPL.com at domain name aftermarket service Afternic for an undisclosed amount.

Fergus has done a domain name upgrade and acquired Fergus.com from Tucows RealNames domain name portfolio of surnames. The job management software company was using FergusApp.com prior but simply brands as Fergus.

Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems CO.,Ltd (Tencent) has acquired QQ.co from GoDaddy’s NameFind portfolio. Tencent owns the very popular and highly used QQ.com domain name, so this was a wise “cover” purchase. I’m pretty sure GoDaddy acquired this domain name when they acquired (what appeared to be nearly all, but not all) the premium .co registry held domain names as reported by DotWeekly in January 2017. GoDaddy has acted a bit differently with the premium .co domains, which have all been under whois privacy that I’ve seen.

Apple Inc. registered SwiftNio.com and SwiftNio.org

FairInterest.com has been acquired by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client. It appears the domain held a buy now of $1,974 based on an existing Sedo listing.

Honk.com, which has been owned by TrueCar Inc. for many years has transferred into domain name registrar GoDaddy from brand protection corporate registrar Markmonitor. Did it sell is the question? It isn’t uncommon for some domains transferring into GoDaddy to retain the past owners whois details. Currently, whois details still show TrueCar Inc. so this one would need to be monitored. TrueCar.com still remains at MarkMonitor, so it doesn’t appear to be a domain portfolio transfer at this time. TrueCar is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. Honk.com had been redirecting to TrueCar.com the past several years, but currently is not.