Name.com
 | |
| Type: | Private |
| Industry: | Internet, Registrar |
| Founded: | USA (2003) |
| Founder(s): | Bill Mushkin |
| Headquarters: | Name.com LLC 125 Rampart Way, |
| Website: | http://www.name.com/ |
| Key People | |
| Bill Mushkin, Founder and CEO Scott McBreen, Business Administration Manager | |
Name.com is an ICANN-accredited registrar of top-level domain (TLD) names[1]. Total Domain Names registered by NAME.COM, as of 11/15/10 are 734,188[2].
History
Name.com was founded by Bill Mushkin, in the year 2003. Bill Mushkin also holds two other registrars, domainsite.com and name.net.
Products and Services offered by Name.com
- Name.com offers more than 50 gTLD and ccTLD extensions and an aftermarket domain brokerage.
- Name.com offers web hosting.
- Name.com offers a product called Rapid Blog, which is a customized version of WordPress.
Awards
- Lifehacker, a popular tech/lifestyle blog, featured Name.com in it's list of Five Best Domain Name Registrars[3].
Controversies
Name.com has been accused of registering a plethora of domain names based on or closely resembling the trademarks of the luxury retailers-Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, and the computer giant-Microsoft, and another company.
Most of the Web addresses are intentional misspellings, such as NeimanMarkis.com or MicrosoftUpdat.com, according to lawsuits filed in federal court in Denver.
Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman argued that Name.com and Spot Domain registered more than 40 domain names that infringed on their trademarks and sought damages of at least $100,000 per name. Examples included NeimanMarco.com and BerdgorfGoodman.com.
The defendants allegedly took advantage of five-day trial periods for each domain name to figure out how much traffic each site attracted and cancelled registrations that failed to draw enough eyeballs. Neiman Marcus said Mushkin's domain name operations hosted Web sites featuring pop-up ads and got paid when people clicked.
In the settlement, Name.com and Spot Domain were required to "perform several tasks," according to the court documents. Mushkin declined to say what the agreement specifically called for[4].