Fora, which is run by the same people as “The Journal“, published a piece over the weekend on Irish companies and domains.
It’s not often that the Irish media, either online or offline, covers domains, so it’s worth a quick read.
The piece talks about how the guy behind IT.ie paid over €10k to acquire the domain in the short domain auction earlier this year. IEDR have not released the full list of auction results from earlier this year, but sale prices varied widely, with many short names going for under €1k.
As the article notes, the prices paid for short .ie domains is significantly lower than the prices you’d pay for .com names.
Web Summit’s acquisition as well as that by Teamwork also get a mention.
Unfortunately the article refers to “domain squatting” without any real understanding of what the term really means:
The IEDR’s control of the registry helps prevent ‘domain squatting’ – or securing an address for the sole purpose of selling it on for a profit.
Sorry, but that is NOT what “domain squatting” is.
It’s unfortunate that what could have been a really good piece on domains shows such little understanding of domain investors or how domains, domain sales etc., really work.
UPDATE: Fora.ie have updated their article and removed both of the references to “domain squatting”.