There was 2003, and a young fellow by the name of Mark Zuckerberg started with a draft idea for a social network; and the name he came up with was FaceMash.com. Now, more than 7 years later, the final social network name Facebook.com has over 500 million users and FaceMash.com is for sale.
This was Zuckerberg first domain for the Harvard social network, which apparently was a college version for “Hot or Not”. The idea of a social network started to grow, and the domain name selected end up with Facebook.com in 2004. By 2007, Mark Zuckerberg did not renew the first domain name and Rahul Jain took it.
FaceMash.com is now for sale in Flippa. The auction started at U$S8000, and the current bid is at U$S19000 with 15 days to go.
If you have an idea for a social network startup, then this is the domain name for you.
The biggest company for domain registration and web hosting, GoDaddy, has put itself up for sale; and according to the Wall Street Journal the price would be around 1 billion dollars.
I guess if we have the money we can buy anything, including top web companies like GoDaddy, which holds currently 43 million domains. But that’s not all, GoDaddy provides web hosting, security features, and other electronic and web offerings. The estimative revenue for this company is U$S 750 and U$S800 million; making the 1 billion price like a lot reasonable.
GoDaddy, based in Arizona, started in 1997 with Bob Parsons who is currently the chief executive. Qatalyst Partners is the company in charge for handling this GoDaddy auction and expects that the magic number of 1 billion dollars can be actually a bit more; considering that other competitive firms like Register.com and Web.com are not anywhere near the kind of profit GoDaddy can achieve.
Scores.org created a complete infographic representing the timeline for Google’s acquisitions in their short life. A simple way to see what they bought, when and in what product this acquisition transformed.
We should know by now that any of the largest companies in the world right now are in fact the most important ones because of their appetite and their capabilities to buy other companies. Google indeed took some great decisions in the last 10 years about this: YouTube, FeedBurner, Postini and Picasa are just a few of those.
Take a look to the complete list. Take note that this infographic divides the acquisition in time and type (technology, market and talent):
If there’s one corporation that can make a business venture a success, it’s Google. If your company is lucky enough to be taken under its wing then you know your in for success. Or at least a ton of money.
A bunch of ex-Google employees founded a service called Ardvark which allows users to ask people for information and post questions. It was originally developed as a mobile-only app but has recently launched a website version.
They have just received a huge offer from Google amounting to $30 million dollars. Despite all the benefits that an investment from Google would bring to Ardvark the original creators are left with a dilemma. Clearly the project has promise if Google are showing interest, so they may like to roll the dice on this one and refuse to sell hoping for more money in the long run. But then if it’s a flop they could be $30 million down and looking rather foolish indeed.
Other investors and bidders are said to be making offers. To be honest, I can’t see them holding out much longer. That much outside pressure and money dangled in front of them must be swaying debates in the conference room.
