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The Internet The Almighty Buck

pizza.com Sold For $2.6m 243

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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pizza.com Sold For $2.6m

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  • You kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WarlockD ( 623872 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:38AM (#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 WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:50AM (#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.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:50AM (#22972240)
    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 Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:55AM (#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.

  • Re:no their can't! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:07AM (#22972682) Homepage
    People who cant spel don't care that they can't spell. Ridiculing them is a waste of time, first, because they don't care, and second, because they can't tell that you're mis-spelling stuff.
  • by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:13AM (#22972724) Homepage

    ... the housing bubble/bust was the product of a free market,
    Mmmmmm, no, the Fed made credit too cheap. HARDLY the product of a free market.
  • Re:Two Americas (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:22AM (#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.
  • by hansamurai ( 907719 ) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:35AM (#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.
  • Re:Two Americas (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:35AM (#22972838) Homepage Journal
    Bear Stearns is getting bailed out by the government (taxpayers). JP Morgan is getting the money to by BS from the government (taxpayers).

    Sure, the stock is going to be worth less net now than it was last year. But that high was built on a bubble inflated by money lent from the Fed (taxpayers).

    And even more to the point, Bear Stearns (and its shareholders, brokers and execs) raked in so many $BILLIONS over the past 10-20 years (much of which ultimately came from the Fed - taxpayers) running the way that eventually ran out, that it was totally worth the price of doing business when its shares collapsed. They made way more cash money operating that way than they lost on paper.

    So I call you math illiterate, and a liar.

    Meanwhile, the Republicans controlling the economy(ies) that pumped all that money through BS will do anything they can to avoid protecting the millions of people in the same economic straits who are going to lose their homes.

    So I call you a thief, since your lies are protecting the Republican wealth redistribution from most Americans to banks like Bear Stearns, and the even risk-freer ones like JP Morgan.

    Your free market economy at work. Free of honesty, that is.
  • Re:Awareness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mini me ( 132455 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:41AM (#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?
  • Why ridiculous? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smackenzie ( 912024 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @11:06AM (#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
  • by SL Baur ( 19540 ) <steve@xemacs.org> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @11:13AM (#22973046) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • Re:Two Americas (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jlanthripp ( 244362 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @11:16AM (#22973064) Journal
    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].
  • by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew&gmail,com> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @11:16AM (#22973066) Homepage Journal
    Cheap credit isn't always bad, because it can create economic stimulus. Deceptive loaning practices and idiot purchasers signing off on ridiculous loans they have zero chance of repaying lead to the housing situation.
  • Re:Two Americas (Score:3, Insightful)

    by radl33t ( 900691 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @11:25AM (#22973124)
    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 to see a bank run? What do you think happens to poor people then?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2008 @12:42PM (#22973546)
    I don't think so. We are about to see the world shift to using Euros rather than dollars. Basically, the bulk of the west (EU, Canada, Australia, and even Japan) is strong enough to keep things going. America needs to allow the dollar to plummet so that we can bring jobs back from China. You have so many Americans pointing their fingers at Mexico and NAFTA, but the reality is that the jobs have shifted to China because they have their yuan fixed against the dollar. I think that it is going to get tough here, but we have the ability to create new jobs.

    In particular, the next KYOTO will almost certainly have the west creating a carbon tax. I believe that the next pres will be offering tax cuts for electric cars. But even more useful is if it is electrical AND the bulk of the car is made here(i.e. 60% American).

    The hard thing will be that China is going to tie their money to the euro instead of the dollar to try and wreck their economy. But EU has shown the willingness to regulate and tax. My belief is that EU will put on a carbon tax that will serve the same effect of hitting China.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @12:58PM (#22973660)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2008 @02:07PM (#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..
  • Re:Two Americas (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2008 @02:26PM (#22974154)
    Man, I am so tired of reading this political bullshit. This has nothing to do with politics.

    The Fed did exactly what the had to do to avert FINANCIAL CATASTROPHE. Do you even understand what happened?

    Here's my analogy: you've got a school surrounded by explosives factories in close proximity. One of them just caught fire. Do you:
    a) get on a soapbox and argue about how bad it is to build explosives factories next to schools, and wonder how we got to this point
    b) say: "let it burn down, they deserved it due to bad fire safety rules"
    c) give all the children burn cream and cross your fingers, because children are more important than a few factories run by rich fat cats
    d) PUT OUT THE FUCKING FIRE YOU IDIOT

    First of all, I think I know what I'm talking about. I'm not a Republican, I hate the Republicans. I manage money for myself and friends and family, been doing it for almost 16 years. If I liquidated my book, I could buy pizza.com with change left over (in a world where billions slosh around every day, this isn't that impressive). I've been short the market since November, and I was heavily short BSC and LEH (the two weakest big banks) when the shit came down. A total collapse of just one company would've made me even more money.

    But I sure as hell didn't want any big bank to go bankrupt, because it wouldn't be limited to just that bank. I think the Fed acted completely appropriately given the situation. Yes, the situation sucked and should never have happened, but that doesn't matter when you're staring down the face of GREAT DEPRESSION II.

    BSC was days away from declared bankruptcy. If that happened, two things would've occurred:

    1) BSC was counterparty to many other banks. Not just with investments, but default swaps and other derivatives. All of that would have to unwind. It would've likely decimated the balance sheets of many other banks. It would've caused deleveraging and fire-sale of mispriced assets (a lot of assets are currently UNDERPRICED out there).

    2) It would've initiated "price discovery" ... all that toxic sludge on balance sheets around the world (in some "safe" money market fund, in a pension in Europe, in a state government, all over the place) would suddenly be worth pennies on the dollar, and would have to be marked-to-market. That would deteriorate balance sheets further, credit ratings would come down, counterparties would be forced to deleverage further, a chain reaction would torch everything, the system would grind to a complete halt. That's like what happened in the Great Depression, YOU DON'T WANT THAT.

    As somebody pointed out in one of the blogs I read, "if you think America sucks at rebuilding Iraq, you don't want to see them try to rebuild the global financial system".

    Unless you don't use banks, never use credit, and don't deal with businesses of any kind, this would affect you. It would affect governments, poor people, rich people, everybody.

    Basically this was the only RATIONAL option. Ben Bernanke knows exactly how this shit works, he studied the Great Depression, and he acted faster than Congress could even imagine, to avert catastrophe. I can't stress this enough. CATASTROPHE.

    I can't imagine how Congress would've dealt with this. I felt sorry for Bernanke trying to explain this to those idiots.

    The taxpayers are backstopping 29 billion via a loan to JPM, basically taking toxic waste as collateral for a loan. $29 billion is PENNIES. Trust me, you won't see it on your tax bill. And here's the kicker... since a lot of those assets are currently mispriced, the government, i.e., the taxpayer, might actually MAKE MONEY on this down the road.

    It's like your buddy is in trouble, and you offer him $29 in exchange for his moldy comic book collection. Either he pays you back, and you break even, or he goes away and you sell the good comic books for $300. In any case you're only out $29.

    They made way more cash money operating that way than they lost on paper.
  • by cheater512 ( 783349 ) <nick@nickstallman.net> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @05:35PM (#22975272) Homepage
    I hate system admins like that who only provide a www dns entry. :(
  • Re:Two Americas (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:46PM (#22976748) Homepage Journal
    Well, the "nerve" that generates your comments comes from someone who would also fall into the 60M or so Americans (not 150M: the childen, retired, imprisoned, sick, military, etc aren't counted towards the media income) would by definition be described in your terms as someone who

    manage[s] to not make more than me. I find myself wondering if they're just lazy, or if we have that many drug addicts, or that many people addicted to government assistance. Are there really people content to run a cash register at the local Quick-E-Mart, who are willing to do nothing to better themselves and improve their family's quality of life?


    The nerve that thinks that the Federal government, which publishes the GDP stats showing us grinding to a halt, is "the liberal media". That thinks the corporate media is liberal.

    But on to the economics, not the Rush Limbo version of them. The bottom 50% collected 12.83% of all income [signonsandiego.com] in 2005. The top 1% collected 21.2%, the top 10% collected 46.44%. The 50% mark fell at about $46,000 [census.gov] in 2005. Since tax rates increase the further people get from the poverty level (about $13K per family [hhs.gov] in 2005), because more of their income is discretionary, not necessities, the bottom 50% was paying those lower tax rates on something like $30,000, under 2/3 of their full income, while the top 50% was paying higher rates on nearly their full income. So the bottom 50% paying 3% (assuming your uncited figures are correct) at lower rates on something like 8% of the income seems fair. If you exclude all the corporate expenses that aren't taxed which the top 50% get a lot more of, that is.

    But hey, you're a truckdriver making about triple the poverty level. You should be paying more taxes, and rich people should be paying less, right? Because you're on the road hauling pellets 300 days a year, and they're flipping their fifth and sixth extra homes to exhaust our banking system.
  • Re:capitalist tool (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dgun ( 1056422 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:48PM (#22976760) Homepage

    When American liberals say they want freedom of choice, that they really mean is that they want to kill babies. And this explains many of the contradictions of their 'ideology'. Your statement made about as much sense as my paraphrase. This concludes my karma burn for the day. Thank you.

    I'm not a liberal. I don't support roe v. wade. My statement makes perfect sense, and was not flame bait in the least.

    American conservatives claim to want free markets, yet consistently support bail outs like the one in the subject of this thread. They also support various subsidies. Or rather, they pick and choose subsidies to support.

    American conservatives claim to want free markets, yet support a wide array of market tinkering. Therefore, my conclusion that what they actually want is zero tax burden is perfectly sensible.

    There are many, many fundamental inconsistencies with American conservatism. Modern American liberalism suffers from inconsistencies as well. That's not to say that inconsistency in political ideology is always a negative. I'm reminded of this every time a libertarian advocates private ownership of public roads and interstates.

    My observation was not meant as a slander, yet I guess I should have realized that it would have been taken that way. :/

    And, byw, the reason I had ideology in quotes in my first post is that I'm not sure it is a completely legitimate use of the term.

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

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