Report: Z.com Sold for Nearly $6.8 Million

The 1 letter Z.com domain name has reportedly been sold for nearly $6.8 million, according to a press release that hit the wires today. The buyer is a company called the GMO Internet Group, and the domain name had previously been registered to Nissan North America, Inc.

According to the press release distributed by the GMO Internet Group:

“GMO Internet, Inc. one of Japan’s leading Internet services providers and operator of the country’s largest domain registrar, today announces the acquisition of single-character domain name, Z.com (z.com/en) for JPY800 million.”

At today’s exchange rate, JPY800 million is worth $6,776,448 USD. This would rank as one of the ten largest publicly reported domain name sales of all time. It would also rank as the largest public domain name sale in 2014, according to the DNJournal year to date sale report. The second highest sale of the year was MI.com, which sold for $3.6 million.

Interestingly, the two letter FB.com domain name was bought by Facebook in 2013 for $8.5 million. In my opinion, the sale price seems very good for the buyer, especially considering how rare single letter .com domain names are.

This news was shared on Twitter by internet entrepreneur Josh Metnick.

The press release is below:

GMO Internet, Inc. one of Japan’s leading Internet services providers and operator of the country’s largest domain registrar, today announces the acquisition of single-character domain name, Z.com (z.com/en) for JPY800 million.

As one of only three single-character domain names currently existing in the .com space, Z.com is highly memorable and offers unparalleled marketing opportunity. With over 100 million registrations, .com is one of the most instantly recognizable and easily identifiable domains in the world. Z.com was acquired to spearhead GMO Internet Group global growth strategy, and securing “Z” under the .com Top Level Domain, provides the Group with a powerful tool to build a strong global brand.

The availability of one and two character domain names in TLDs varies, but only six exist in legacy generic Top Level Domains (Q.com, X.com, and Z.com, I.net, Q.net, X.com). In the crowded .com namespace, short and memorable domain names command premium prices not least for the simplicity and clarity of branding they offer. In 2010, sex.com was sold for USD13 million (source: http://www.domaining.com/topsales/), and this is widely recognized to be the highest-value domain name sale in history. The acquisition of Z.com today, represents a transaction of comparable significance to this record-breaking sale.

About GMO Internet Group

GMO Internet Group is an Internet services industry leader, developing and operating Japan’s most widely used domain, hosting & cloud, ecommerce, security, and payment solutions. The Group also comprises the world’s largest online FX trading platform, as well as online advertising, Internet media, and mobile entertainment products. GMO Internet, Inc. (TSE: 9449) is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

9 COMMENTS

  1. This could be a bit off topic but I’ve always had extremely negative feeling about Nissan because of their bullying tactics against Mr. Nissan in the nissan.com case (documented on the current website). As a domainer I would never buy their cars.

  2. They are even more rare then most people think. 7 million dollars is a lot of money but it’s seems cheap for this domain. I am curious how Nissan came up with valuation.

    I just read this on TheDomains.com

    “Only six exist one letter .com are in existence; Z.com. Q.com, X.com, and Z.com, I.net, Q.net, X.com.”

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