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RealNames.com up at Auction: $250,000

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August 2nd, 2007 by Jay Westerdal

RealnamesREDMOND, Wash., Mar. 14, 2000 — Microsoft today announced that it will integrate RealNames’ Internet Keyword solution — a common naming system that gives users direct and intuitive navigation using simple, everyday words — into MSN Search and Internet Explorer. The company also announced that it is taking an equity stake of approximately 20 percent in RealNames. To find out what this announcement means for the two companies — and how the Internet Keyword solution fits into Microsoft’s Everyday Web vision

That was an announcement 7 years and a $130 Million dollars ago. The domain is going up for auction this month at the DomainTools Live auction for $250,000. The built-in press around this name is huge and the domain is awesome for a new brand. Two months ago Sedo bought GreatDomains.com for a reported $2 Million dollars and that failed company had been sold to Verisign for $50 Million in 2000.

Keith TeareRealNames was a company founded in 1997 by Keith Teare. Its goal was to create a multilingual keyword-based naming system for the Internet that would translate keywords typed into the address bar of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser to Uniform Resource Identifiers, based on the existing Domain Name System, that would access the page registered by the owner of the RealNames keyword.

In effect, to users of Internet Explorer, RealNames became a domain registry which was capable of registering names that worked without needing to belong to a top level domain such as “.com” or “.net”. RealNames and its backers expected this to be a lucrative source of income, and it raised more than $130m of funding for its venture.

RealNames was dependent on maintaining its association with Microsoft that enabled the RealNames service on Microsoft’s web browser. RealNames shut down operations in 2002 following a decision by Microsoft to redirect the 1 billion page views per calendar quarter that RealNames were resolving from the browser address bar into the MSN search engine.

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Posted in Domain Auction, Domain Roundtable, DomainTools Auction | 6 Comments »

Comments

  1. Tim_Cohn Says:
    August 2nd, 2007 at 1:34 PM

    Thanks for reminding me of the cash I sank and lost in that “service”…

  2. crinux Says:
    August 2nd, 2007 at 6:53 PM

    Worthless name of a back stabbing business that could not fly the winds of monopoly on the web seas.

  3. crinux Says:
    August 2nd, 2007 at 7:08 PM

    To be more clear, any form, or any excuse for “translating” of a user’s query to their advantage is just Blunt Censorship, and that was what RealNames & MS stood for.

  4. DESeller Says:
    August 2nd, 2007 at 10:50 PM

    During those days, it was indeed irritating to see that the damn MS appeared when I forgot to type an extension.

    What I hate is that people making money and take advantage of mistakes.

    If I had the money, I would hate to buy this name!

  5. cybertonic Says:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 3:05 AM

    This generic name is NOT based in a popular search term.
    In fact NOBODY search for “real names”.
    And nobody also bid that term except realnames.comrealnames.com itself!
    The only interest this domain has is as a nice name for a new service.
    Now I am not sure it’s very clever to wear the name of a dead service, imagine having the same bad chance…
    Plus, be honest, for really less than 250K you can find very classy domains based in just few characters that will better match the service you want to launch.
    It’s not a name that should sell more then few dozen of thousands dollars – reserve really too high!

    UPDATE BY JAY: This name carries a lot of press. I can imagine that many, many people know this name and that will get a lot of play in the press if it is used for the name of a new company.

  6. keithteare Says:
    August 14th, 2007 at 3:56 PM

    Amazing there are still a few realnames haters after 5 years :-)

    FWIW, about 40% of ALL searches on Google are for things which only have a single destination (like I feel lucky). The other 60% are search terms related to research of subjects or categories. RealNames had 1 billion (yes 1 billion) successful queries per quarter in Q1 2002. Clearly consumers were pleased to use the service. Over half of those were in Chinese, Korean or Japanese, as RealNames was able to resolve keywords in all character sets across many national realnames namespaces.

    Personally I think the service would still be a huge one if it was still running (but of course I am biased).

    Anyway, the domain is for sale. The reserve is what it is! Internetkeywords.comInternetkeywords.com is also for sale.

    Best
    Keith
    former founder/ceo
    realnames