Microsoft Buys MSN.RU
Microsoft Russia recently purchased the domain MSN.ru at an undisclosed price, but experts say it could have amounted to a million dollars. Microsoft confirmed the acquisition so if you visit MSN.ru now its homepage sports the ubiquitous Microsoft icons with Windows Live in the spotlight.
Microsoft intends to boost its share in Russia and acquiring the .ru domain is part of the plan. "MSN is getting more and more popular in Russia, and this is very important for Microsoft Russia", said Petr Suzdalev, Microsoft Russia spokesman. "We will undoubtedly continue developing MSN.ru".
Roman Elkhadjiev was the former owner of MSN.ru. He had registered about 8 years ago for a company specializing in software development. MSN, according to Elkhadjiev, was an acronym for Merchant Support Network. The company eventually closed and the domain came up for sale in June last year. An offer for the domain reached $350,000 but no sale took place at that figure. Different redirect links appeared on the site, most of them related to Elkhadjiev's projects.
One of Russia's most expensive domains was Vodka.ru, sold at $1M. Vodka.com was more expensive at $3M. In 2005, Google bought Google.cn and Google.com.cn for $1M. So did Microsoft really pay $1 million for MSN.ru? It is certainly a possibility, and the domain is definitely worth that amount. It's also interesting to note that in Russia and China, foreign companies seem to prefer to pay the actual market value for domains they failed to register when they had the opportunity to do so, rather than entangle themselves in lengthy lawsuits with an uncertain outcome.
I can certainly see Microsoft paying $1mill for it, i imagine long term the effects of doing so will probably prove for a decent ROI for them.
I wonder if this move spells the beggining for a few purchases, i see msn.su and msn.tk are not owned by Microsoft yet lol.
This is really fantastic business for old domain owner.
just buy a domain name of a popular brand, then sold it in its brand owner. 1/3$ M for every domain, really that is very good business.
Why that so easy to sell domain but not me? My domain http://www.avun.com has high traffic (over 11,000 hits daily) for sale but never got offers.
Generic directory domains have turned the corner in value in 2006 & 2007.
Any directory domain depending on the amount of revenue potential has significant value, the more potential advertising customers the more it is worth, set up as a
developed directory will enhance its value. If you are in the soil testing business and had a directory soiltesting.com the potential advertising would be limited as their
is not a lot of daily high consumer demand , however, a high consumer generic directory would be any generic domain with auto or car.
A quick look a google as of 21 December 07 has auto showing 1,360,000,000 and car as 1,320,000,000 so the competitive automotive industry domains with
these directory words (auto and car) would have a major search impact. Auto.com would have a revenue potential of millions of dollars a day, this domain would
surely draw a premium well into many million, a case example is business.com that was sold for around $340M - these examples are singular generic words. Two
three and four word directory domains have just as much potential, e.g.: auto body shops is a directory domain that has high consumer demand in the US in
particular, so, AutoBodyShops.com as a domain search directory and its email and web page address capabilities has exceptional potential, the recent sale of
sportinggoods.com at $450K is a good example, so to some up I believe we can demonstrate that any generic directory domain with high user potential draws a
premium. I think a fair expectation would be $500K to $1.5M given their revenue earning potential.
>>>Why that so easy to sell domain but not me? My domain http://www.avun.com has high traffic (over 11,000 hits daily) for sale but never got offers.
I have too many sites, that have big traffic. And I can sale it for good prices
Apr 12th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
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