Name.com

Name.com
Headquarters Denver, Colorado,
United States
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) William Mushkin
Industry Domain Registrar
Products Web Services
Owner Rightside Group
Website www.name.com
Alexa rank Negative increase 3304 (August 2015)[1]

Name.com is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web hosting company.

History

Name.com was founded in 2003, by Bill Mushkin. Mushkin bought the company Spot Domain LLC (Domainsite.com) in 2002. There are multiple registrars NAME.COM LLC uses for reselling: domainsite.com, name.com, name.net, sunmounta.in, alohanic.com, briarwoodtechnologies.com, domainregservices.com.[2]

On January 7, 2013, it was announced that Name.com was acquired by Demand Media. [3] According to 10K reports from Demand Media the company paid $18 million to acquire Name.com.

The new parent company of Name.com is Rightside which is full service registrar and registry provider. Rightside also owns the domain registrar eNom which provides reseller domain services as well as domain registration. Rightside owns nearly 40 of the new TLDs, which it markets through Name.com and other registry partners.[4]

Services

Name.com offers more than 50 gTLD and ccTLD extensions and an aftermarket domain brokerage. Customers have over one million domain names registered with the company.[5] Name supports two factor authentication. [6]

Domain tasting allegation

In 2007, Name.com was accused of trademark infringement by Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. The companies declared the domain registrars Name.com and Spot Domain had registered over 40 domains of various misspellings, such as NeimanMarco.com and BerdgorfGoodman.com. These domains failed to show accurate contact information or provided false details.[2] In the complaint, which was filed in March 2007, in the US District Court in Denver, the high-end retailers sought damages of at least $100,000 per name.[7]

Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman claimed that the registrars were taking advantage of their special status with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to secure misspelled domains during the five-day grace period, and paying only for the ones with valuable revenue. This practice, called domain tasting, resulted in cybersquatting on various trademarked names. Neiman Marcus had accused the registrar Dotster in 2006 of the same infringement.[8] Mushkin, however, denied the accusations of "domain tasting," explaining that Name.com and Spot Domain were merely registrars, caught in the crossfire. He also argued that "the industry is young," and the issues were not clear-cut. In the settlement, there were several stipulations imposed on the companies Name.com and Spot Domain. Mushkin declined to specify the agreement that was reached.[2]

DNS Hijacking

Reports of DNS hijacking by Name.com have appeared on the Internet as early as 2010.[9] The registrar will never return a NXDOMAIN status for DNS queries, and instead directs users to an advertising site they operate. When faced with criticism over this practice, the company points[10] to clause of their Domain Registration agreement that relates to "parked domain names".

As of late 2013, the company ended this practice and no longer subverts the resolution of DNS queries to parked pages.

Philanthropy

Their website features an assortment of causes supported[11] by Name.com. The company has supported a range of non-profits, including a small literary magazine in South Africa, Amazwi, and a well-known local organization, Environment Colorado. Many of the charities featured are small, grassroots efforts, though Susan G. Komen and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are listed as well.[11]

Apart from the listed donations, Name.com has been involved in several other charitable efforts. The company has a bike-to-work incentive program which involves payback for a new bicycle.[11] Though the project appears to be at a standstill, Name.com worked briefly on a system of maps for laptop.org,[12] and offered to guide interns in their Denver office.[13] In April, 2008, Name.com went to London for the Webby’s People’s Voice Awards, sponsored by The Public Interest Registry, the registry behind the .ORG extension. Name.com sponsored Idealist.org at the event, which featured a panel of non-profits, including Greenpeace and Wikipedia.[14]

Notes

  1. ↑ "name.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-08-10.
  2. 1 2 3 Paton, James (2008-01-30). "PATON: Big brands target entrepreneur in domain name battle". Rocky Mountain News. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  3. ↑ Naidu, Taryn. Naidu, Taryn (2012-01-07). "Name.com Joins the Demand Media Family". Demand Media. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  4. ↑ Global Newswire retrieved March 17, 2016
  5. ↑ Jared (2010-10-08). "The Little Registrar That Could". Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  6. ↑ "Name.com Stays a Step Ahead of Online Criminals by Joining VeriSign(R) Identity Protection Network". CNN Money. 2009-01-28. Archived from the original on 2009-01-31. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  7. ↑ Jesdanun, Anick. Jesdanun, Anick (2007-03-23). "Neiman Marcus sues over domain names". Associated Press. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  8. ↑ McCullagh, Declan (2006-06-02). "Dotster named in massive cybersquatting suit". CNET News. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  9. ↑ Hammond, Nathan (2011-04-13). "Name.com: Another Unscrupulous Registrar". nathanhammond.com. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  10. ↑ "Pro Tip: How to get rid of that pesky parking page.". Name.com. 2012-01-05. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  11. 1 2 3 "For the Good of Our Community, Our Company, and Our World.". Name.com. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  12. ↑ "Name.com". One Laptop per Child. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  13. ↑ "Summer of Content organizations". One Laptop per Child. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  14. ↑ Jared (2008-04-26). "Doing Good Is Cool Again". Name.com. Retrieved 2008-12-15.

External links

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