In an announcement made today, Yahoo Inc said it would be selling a valuable lot of domain names. In a Tumblr entry by Yahoo's Deputy General Counsel Kevin Kramer, the tech giant would be launching a week-long auction of domains starting on NOvember 14Some of the domain names mentioned in the announcement in order to tease potential bidders are Crackers.com, AV.com, Jockeys.com, Sled.com and Blogsport.com.
According to current market prices on Sedo.com, the domain names to be sold in Yahoo's auction could fetch from USD1,000 to USD1.5 million per domain name. Sedo is the leading online marketplace of domains in the world. However, tech news website noted that domain sales by startups like Donust and major players like GoDaddy could easily decrease the value of the domains Yahoo would be seeling. Donuts, GoDaddy and other domain registries were reportedly hard at work bringing new domain names with non-traditional extensions (gTLDs) to the market.
On the other hand, VentureBeat deduced that the move to sell old domains would be part of Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer's strategy to make the company's business model more lean. Moreover, the tech news site thought that Mayer might exit from the domain squatting business altogether or possibly acquire a new company.
Mayer started acquiring companies since taking over as the chief of Yahoo last year. One of Yahoo's high-profile purchases was Tumblr, which was acquired for USD1.1 billion in May this year. According to CNN, Mayer acquired mobile-focused startups at inexpensive prices simply to absorb engineering talent to add to its Yahoo team. Aside from Tumblr, Yahoo acquired url-shortening service Bread, Hitpost, an online game and scenario betting site that accepts virtual currency, social media and news aggregator Rockmelt, mobile video app Qwiki, and news aggregator app Summly. Summly was Yahoo's most high-profile acquisition to date, as founder Nick D'Aloisio created the app at 15 years of age.
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