Register.com
 | |
| Type: | Private |
| Industry: | Registrar |
| Founded: | USA (1999) |
| Founder(s): | Richard Foreman Peter Foreman |
| Headquarters: | 575 8th Ave., 11th FL New York, NY 10018-3011, USA |
| Employees: | 489 (2008) |
| Revenue: | 51.70 M (2008) |
| Website: | http://www.register.com |
| Key People | |
| David L. Brown, President Gary S. Michel , EVP and CFO Myles Trachtenberg, SVP and CIO | |
Register.com is a web hosting and internet domain register company based on NY, USA.
The company mainly sells registrations for general extension i.e. .com, .net, .org , .co , .biz and also country based extensions i.e. .uk, .us, .jp, .ca etc.The company serves an extensive range of customers from individuals and small businesses to large corporations, and it has more than 2.5 million domain names under its management. [1]
The company also offers Email Package, website hosting, website developing, security solutions, internet marketing etc services. The headquarter of Register.com is in New York city and it has has branches in Baltimore and Halifix, USA, in London, England and in Nova Scotia, Canada.
History
The company was founded in 1994 by brothers Richard Foreman and Peter Foreman as an Internet Service Provider under the name Forman Interactive. The company changed its name to Register.com in 1999.
Register.com was one of the first five testbed Registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System announced my ICANN in 1999.[2]
In 2000, Register.com issued an IPO and began trading on the NASDAQ under ticker symbol RCOM pricing its share at $24.[3] In 2004 the company was listed by VeriSign as one of the top domain name registrars in the world.
In 2006 the Formans sold Register.com to the San Francisco-based private equity firm Vector Capital Corporation for about 200 million dollars.[4]
Register.com was acquired by Web.com for about $135 million in mid 2010.[5]
ICANN Registrar Accreditation
In march 1999, ICANN Board posted the Statement of Registrar Accreditation Policy to implement a program for registrar accreditation for the .com, .net, and .org top-level domains. From March 11 to April 8, 1999, ICANN accepted applications from entities seeking accreditation to participate as one of the five domain name registrars in the SRS Testbed Program.[6]
On April 21, 1999, ICANN announced Register.com was one of the first five testbed registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System. On June 7, the company began operations under this name as a paid registrar in the .com, .net and .org domains along with AOL, CORE, France Telecom/Oléane and Melbourne IT. Register.com is the first registrar to come online on 7 June. [7]
Vector's acquisition of Register.com
Register.com launched very successful IPO in 2000 and one of the pionneer company in internet business for 4-5 years. However, during 2005 as demand for domain names slowed, Register.com’s revenues and market value fell significantly and the company began to face different challenges. [8]The company developed a strategy to focus on small business and providing online services to serve that segment of the market but still kept underperforming in terms of revenues and on the stock market.[9]
On August 9, 2005, Register.com announced that they signed a merger agreement for an acquisition by Vector Capital Corporation, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. [10]Public share holders of Register.com receive cashed consideration of $7.81 per share in the merger. Following the merger, Register.com was once again privately held and was no longer listed on The Nasdaq National Market.[11]