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pizza.com Sold For $2.6m

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sat Apr 05, 2008 07:32 AM
from the meanwhile-people-are-losing-their-homes dept.
f8d noted a beeb bit on the fact that the pizza.com domain name was sold for a ridiculous 2.6m bucks. Can there be a bubble and a recession at the same time, or do the two cancel each other out like Penn & Teller?
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  • You kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WarlockD (623872) on Saturday April 05 2008, @07:38AM (#22972170)
    That was a STEAL. Just think of the marketing budget of any of the standard delivery places (Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, etc). This is not even a blip on that radar. I just hope it was a pizza place. God help us all if it was a porn company.
    • by CheeseburgerBrown (553703) on Saturday April 05 2008, @07:41AM (#22972184) Homepage Journal
      If it isn't a pizza company, I say we abandon domain names and go back to numeric addressing.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Domain names? Who uses those nowdays? I just enter my QUERY into the address bar and voala! I get a page.

        Search is the big winner not domain names, thats such a money laundering scheme by ICANN and just for suckers.

        If something is GOOD then it travels by word of mouth, just like news.

        • by LoadWB (592248) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:32AM (#22972818) Homepage Journal
          Frankly I've never used a "search" I just fire up my Intarweb close out a couple of advertisements and today's news then a couple more advertisements then another then spend some time changing my passwords on my bank accounts because my bank says they had to lock my account (thank goodness they're looking out for me because I didn't even remember about my account with the National Bank of Zimbabwe and I know its really secure because they ask for so much of my personal information to prove its me) and I am also lucky enough to get most of the shopping I need done from the mail in my Inbox (I haven't had to go to the store for medicine or vitamins or butt paste in ages) then type something into the "keyword" box and I get what I need but if it doesn't show anything then I figure it doesn't exist or I really didn't need it anyway.

          LOLZ
        • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2008, @01:07PM (#22974044)
          What I have found funny is that I work at a tech company, for the sake of this post let's go with "foobar", and I was over at a sales persons desk when I asked him to go to our homepage. "Just go to foobar.com", I told him. He goes and types "foobar.com" in the search box at the top of the Firefox chrome. "Wait wait wait, what are you doing?", I asked, "Why don't you just type it in the address bar and go straight there?". "What are you talking about, I am typing it in the address bar!", he replies. I grab the keyboard and show him how to type a URL into Firefox. "Oh, I didn't know you could do that with foobar.com", he said.

          Apparently unless some people see something with http://www./ [www.] on the front, they have no idea they can stick it in the address bar. Google has become the gateway to the internet, even when you could get there directly..
            • by WaltBusterkeys (1156557) on Saturday April 05 2008, @03:02PM (#22974696)
              When I'm traveling for business I couldn't care what pizza place I get so long as they deliver to my hotel. If pizza.com had a standard order form for all the local pizza places (just enter an address and it'll give a map or something) then I'd be quite happy to pay them a $0.50 or $1.00 convenience fee. Maybe I'm an isolated case (traveling for work is a weird venture), but there are business models here.
            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              Domain names are more or less useless when billions of sites, many which capitalize on mistyped or abandoned domain names, exist.

              Domain names are very useful because they, unlike IP addresses, are location independent. This means that the Pirate Bay can move their servers from Sweden to some free country, and no one needs to care, since the old address keeps on working despite the packets now traveling somewhere else.

              You could have completely randomized domain names and they still would perform a usef

  • by FoolsGold (1139759) on Saturday April 05 2008, @07:40AM (#22972182)
    Buying a ton of domain names on the cheap in the mid 90's would have been a sound investment.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2008, @07:45AM (#22972214)
    I've PERSONALLY been so hungry I couldn't make it to google, typing "pizza" directly into the URL bar AT LEAST 50,000 times, spending $20+ dollars each time. If there's a couple of more people out there like me, they've already broken even.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      you jest, but seriously Even In a Recession People Need To Eat. why do you think most of the small independent millionaire/billionaires founded their own regional food chain. consider, for instance, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. Do you know ANY Other Way for a HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT to become a billionaire? do you really? really? I'd like to know, because I have one year of college, and I'd like to be e billionaire too...
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        you jest, but seriously Even In a Recession People Need To Eat. why do you think most of the small independent millionaire/billionaires founded their own regional food chain. consider, for instance, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. Do you know ANY Other Way for a HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT to become a billionaire? do you really? really? I'd like to know, because I have one year of college, and I'd like to be e billionaire too...

        Well, it takes a university dropout [wikipedia.org] to enter the software field so I suppose high school dropout and food were inevitable?

  • by WindBourne (631190) on Saturday April 05 2008, @07:50AM (#22972238) Journal
    First, America is going through a recession because of our debt, combined with our realizing that we have overspent. OTH, Europe, japan, canada, etc are all picking up speed while the dollar continues to plummet due to our federal and trade deficits. Hopefully, the next president will be responsible.

    Second, the net remains one of the best places to lower your costs. Far cheaper than having a building and ppl. 2.6M? That is nothing.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, we have not quite tipped into a recession yet...defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. But, with the recent jobs report its is looking more likely. But really only the mealy mouth politicians are saying we are in a recession right NOW.

      Second, the debt you mention is of course the sub-prime business. Which was encouraged by the Democrats whining about the loan industry not loaning enough to those with bad credit. Of course they were more than happy to make the loans, collect the up
    • by Jafafa Hots (580169) on Saturday April 05 2008, @11:58AM (#22973660) Homepage Journal

      First, America is going through a recession because of our debt, combined with our realizing that we have overspent. OTH, Europe, japan, canada, etc are all picking up speed while the dollar continues to plummet due to our federal and trade deficits. Hopefully, the next president will be responsible.

      Don't worry, the Republicans are certain to make sure we hold the next president responsible.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Ah, the average argument and supporting evidence of a American.
  • by Joce640k (829181) on Saturday April 05 2008, @07:55AM (#22972274) Homepage
    A major pizza maker will spend more than that on TV advertising every month. It's nothing in the big scheme of things.

  • Awareness (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Firas Zirie (1179357) on Saturday April 05 2008, @08:14AM (#22972396)
    To those who are talking about how 2.6 mil is nothing to a pizza chain I ask: How are you going to get the public aware of the fact that pizza.com even exists? Personally, if I wanted pizza I'd type dominospizza.com or pizzahut.com as a first guess at anything pizza related online. Even as a computer literate person I can draw from experience that most generic domain names are link farms and still not go to pizza.com. Maybe the pizza stores have to advertise their new site on tv for another 2..... oh wait
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      For a while, British Gas were advertising their website as house.co.uk [house.co.uk]. Now, call me crazy, but if I was looking for the British Gas website I would probably type in britishgas.co.uk [britishgas.co.uk] (which is what house.co.uk [house.co.uk] redirects to), or I would type 'British Gas' into Google.

      And if I was typing in house.co.uk [house.co.uk] into my address bar without knowing who owned it, I probably wouldn't be expecting to see the website of a purveyor of piped fossil fuels.

    • Why would you have to? Do you know how much importance Google puts on keywords that are in the URL...
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          True. But it does come up fifth, and number two is wikipedia which has huge pagerank for any subject. So whoever bought it has gained a very high placing for that search query without paying Google any money for a placed search result. Whether or not the money they paid for it compares with the money for paid results on that query is another question entirely.
    • Re:Awareness (Score:5, Informative)

      by garett_spencley (193892) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:05AM (#22972668) Journal
      Your problem is that you are too smart to understand the business model.

      I am a webmaster and I run a few high traffic web sites. I see people hitting my sites all the time who type in www.mydomain.com into GOOGLE rather than their address bar.

      Not to mention the search engine possibilities. While having pizza.com does not guarantee that you'll be #1 for the search term "pizza" it will help a lot. Especially with the PR it's getting it wouldn't surprise me if it's already #1 due to all the news sites linking to it.

      Also, while I am not a domain squatter, I have read up on the business model. It's not uncommon for people to type things like "bubblegum.com" into their address bar just to see what happens. I heard that the guy who owns bubblegum.com or gum.com or something makes a grand / DAY just having a spam page up (might be a myth but imagine having a few thousand such domains making SOMETHING every day even it's pennies).

      So yeah, 2.6M for pizza.com is a steal, and it's pennies for a big chain like Pizza Hut. And as for your "it's still going to cost something in advertising", assuming it is a big chain that bought the domain, all they have to do is change their flyers and tv ads so that instead of "pizzahut.com" it prints "pizza.com". Their ad budget stays the same.
    • Re:Awareness (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mini me (132455) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:41AM (#22972870)

      How are you going to get the public aware of the fact that pizza.com even exists?

      Post a story about it on Slashdot?
  • by BabyDave (575083) on Saturday April 05 2008, @08:15AM (#22972402)
    ... the domain transfer took more than 30 mins, so it was free.
  • by memorycardfull (1187485) on Saturday April 05 2008, @08:16AM (#22972410)
    If only their was a homophone for pizza.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If only their was a homophone for pizza.
      There going to be so pissed, your never going to get moderator points!
  • It takes a while for old stock to clear out. This is especially true for things like real estate and other perceived high value property. This is why we are approaching a year inventory of housing, and for the most part owners are not dropping prices to reduce the supply as demand and financing plummets.

    In any case, the article states nothing of the actual asking price. It could be that the even in a bubble, the asking price was too high, and the owner, seeing a recession, lowered the price. Or it co

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      TFA only says the domain was bought by an anonymous buyer which probably means that it wasn't an actual Pizza business that bought it.

      The whois for pizza.com still shows Christopher Clark as the owner.

      I'd guess it's along the lines someone wrote earlier - it was bought by a speculator who has some idea of the true value of the domain name. US$2.6M is nothing compared to what those chains spend in advertising.
  • d'oh!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lxy (80823) on Saturday April 05 2008, @08:47AM (#22972540) Journal
    Back in 1995, my friends and I were looking for domains to register. One of the domains we considered was pizza.com. We decided to skip it, as we didn't want to invest $35/yr on a domain we would probably never use.

    *bangs head on desk*
  • How much would each extra topping be then? $100,000?
  • Two Americas (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:04AM (#22972656) Homepage Journal
    A recession and a bubble at the same time? Of course. When oil and bank corps, and the people who own & run them are bathing in record profits (above the records set every year for the past decade and a half, above the records set every year except maybe one or two of every twenty for the past few centuries), but literally millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed, millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes, income has shrunk over the past 25 years while prices have doubled, tripled or more (especially oil/gas prices and bank fees)...

    Of course there's a recession and a bubble possible. Where do you think that bubble money comes from? And do you think that when it pops, everyone loses their shirt? Or maybe the rich people who run the country (*cough* Bear Stearns *cough*) will never see any real risk, while the poor are as free as the rich to sleep under a bridge.

    The biggest lie about "the economy" is that it's "the" economy. There are separate economies for the rich and everyone else, shunted and fed back into each other separately. Except the rich economy has a siphon into the other economy.
    • Re:Two Americas (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Russ Nelson (33911) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:22AM (#22972772) Homepage
      BEAR STEARNS COS THE (NYSE: BSC)
      Last Trade: 10.47
      52wk Range: 2.84 - 159.36

      The stock is down 93.5% from its high last year. You call that "never ... any real risk"? I call you insane.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          If by "Fed" you mean the Federal Reserve, you are quite mistaken. You really should find out what the Federal Reserve is before you spout off as if you know what you are talking about. A good starting point is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System [wikipedia.org].
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Do you know what your talking about?

          I am suspicious that you do not have the credentials to be making these claims. Both of your posts use adjectives and vague numbers, suggesting to me that this info emanated from the wrong end of your body. Could you provide some concrete evidence? Not that I'm a cheerleader for the US banking system, federal reserve, fed government, plainly corrupt US markets, etc, etc, but you come off a bit delusional.

          Do you think Bear Stearns should have crumbled? Do you want
    • Re:Two Americas (Score:5, Informative)

      by oni (41625) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:44AM (#22972888) Homepage
      *sign*

      1: learn the difference between profit and profit margin.

      2: "millions of people" are not getting losing their homes. You're off by an entire order of magnitude - which makes it pretty clear that you're just spewing hyperbole

      2.a: The majority of the people who will lose their homes *lied* on their applications. That's right. They lied so that they could get a $300k McMansion on their 30k salary. Had they been honest, they couldn't have gotten that big a loan, but then they might have had to *gasp* live within their means, and we Americans just can't have that, now can we.
      • Re:Two Americas (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Doc Ruby (173196) on Saturday April 05 2008, @11:26AM (#22973448) Homepage Journal

        and why is this? millions of people took on a loan they couldn't handle. It has to do with the fact that many banks were forced to give out loans (by the government) to people that they knew were not making enough to pay it back.

        No, that's not why.

        Yes, millions took on loans they couldn't handle. Banks weren't "forced to give out loans". Unless you mean that they were forced by their shareholders natural profit motive to take near-0% wholesale loans from the government, which government eliminated requirements that the retail borrowers be able to pay it back, then mark it up to several percent, and jack that up to a dozen percent or more after the borrowers were committed to the loan (because they'd lose their house, and whatever they'd already repaid).

        Yes, there were millions of people who took out loans they couldn't afford. I never said they shouldn't lose their houses, or otherwise take the hit. There were many people who got loans on fraud, too, though most of those frauds were encouraged by banks that didn't ask even for documentation - just asserting on a single form that you made $X a year was enough.

        Hell, we just lived through the age of "NINJA" loans: No Income, No Job or Assets. Given happily by banks, hand over fist.

        Why? Not because "the government forced them to". But because the government made them a delightful offer they couldn't refuse: make $BILLIONS on these stupid loans, marking up loans from the government, and then when lots go bad, the government will bail you out. The problem is that "the government" meant "politicians bribed by the banks" when it came to deciding to hand out the money, but "the government" means "taxpayers" when it comes to actually paying for it. Taxpayers who were themselves bribed by those politicians with "tax cuts" and even tax rebates, all so the entire cost could be put onto the public debt, which means it cost even more interest atop what the mortgage interest cost.

        If you'd asked about what to do about the people who took loans they can't repay, you'd have found that of course they should bear the damage from failing under their risks. People who were sold loans by fraudulent banks should still have to repay the principal to those banks, and pay an interest rate set to the median fixed rate their neighbors paid in the financial quarter they all were issued their loans, but to a government liquidity fund rather than to the defrauding bank, from which fund new loans can be made if necessary and creditworthy. If they still can't pay, they foreclose like anyone else. People taking loans on true terms they signed should also have to pay, unless they go bankrupt like anyone else - at which point the judge can redesign their mortgage debt, along with all their obligations to creditors, just like anyone else. And everyone in the country should be allowed to tap their IRAs and other separate funds ordinarily unavailable to keep their homes from foreclosing. But since you were too busy inventing what I think about risk and consequences, you didn't bother to find out.

        Blah blah blah about "rich vs poor is a lie". The fact is that the rich have every privilege. I didn't say that no poor people can get rich: some can, especially if they can help the rich get richer (helping the poor get richer makes practically no one rich in this country). I personally came from a middle class family, worked regular jobs starting at age 13, and made myself rich by working like a slave starting up my own company on my own savings and brains. I even helped some kids who'd grown up poor by training and employing them, and they're at least upper middle class, and some are rich. I don't say anyone should get extra privileges and opportunities because they're not rich, just that the rich have enough extra opportunities and privileges they can legitimately buy, without being subsidized in risk and profits by the taxpayers when they go wrong, more than everyone else gets protected. Being rich ha

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        I live debt-free, and always have. But if these people who bought homes too expensive to afford get to keep them, if the flippers get to keep all their profits, if the banks get to keep all their profits after mismanaging the entire catastrophe, but I've got to pay to bail them out, then I look pretty stupid for not getting in on the action, don't I?

        Which lots of people "smart" enough to have stayed out will also see if that all comes down. And so the next time, the rolls of the exploiters will be full, and
  • by hansamurai (907719) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:35AM (#22972836) Homepage Journal
    I was discussing this at lunch yesterday with some coworkers, and most of us thought it was an incredible waste of money. How many people do you know that when they want something, they open up their browser and just type what they want plus .com right into the address bar? Only complete fools do that and I'm honestly sure that population subset is very small and made up of old people.

    One guy was defending their position rather well though, he basically said that whenever you do non-internet advertising, such as on television or the radio, having a very simple URL is a necessity for having people remember it for later on.
  • Bubble & Recession? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anna Merikin (529843) on Saturday April 05 2008, @09:57AM (#22972958) Journal

    Can their be a bubble and a recession at the same time, or do the two cancel each other out like Penn & Teller?

    Of course there can, and that's exactly what is happening. There is too much venture capital out there and few good places to invest it. There is a recession because oil and other commodities have cut into corporate profits and a bubble because billions of VC funding is available, due to GWB's tax cuts for the rich.

    Reagan's trickle-down policies caused a simiilar bubble (in derivatives) in 1987, A decade later, more easy Fed money caused Venture Capitalists to invest in high-tech stocks, causing the famous dot-com bubble and bust.

    A recession is when lots of poor and middle class people lose their jobs; a bubble is when a few VCs all decide to put their money in the same place at the same time, driving up prices but not value or production.

    Which is what's happening now.

  • Why ridiculous? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smackenzie (912024) on Saturday April 05 2008, @10:06AM (#22973014)
    Why is 2.6M for one of the most recognized words in the English (and other) languages ridiculous?
    Dominos Pizza Market Cap: $843,000,000
    Papa John's Market Cap: $725,000,000
    Pizza Hut 2007 Sales: $26,000,000
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Tag it!!

      therenottheir