US man gets $2.6m for domain name

[mromero]

A US man has sold the domain name pizza.com for $2.6m (£1.3m) - after maintaining the site for just $20 a year since 1994.

Chris Clark, 43, accepted the offer from an anonymous bidder after a week-long online auction.

[news.bbc.co.uk...]

[LifeinAsia]

The article is kind of misleading. It's not like he hasn't been trying to sell it- archive.org shows a page urging "*seriously* interested" parties to contact him to buy it and several other domains. And it's had standard parked domain advertising since 2005.

[JS_Harris]

He's going to get sued by the owners of the business he sold in 2000. He just stated that he bought the domain name for the purposes of promoting the business, hence it was created with the business in mind. It should have been transfered to the new owners.

Of course I know nothing of the fine print, but I do know how much incentive 2.6 million will create to have a judge decide on the matter anyway. Spending the lawyer retainer fee (10,000?) for a shot at winning millions is a foregone conclusion these days. A smart lawyer will even hint that 2.6 million was low for such a great and "unique" domain name.

I'm bothering to write this because when money is involved, say nothing publicly. It should be a golden rule.