The registry for .com domain names has made a .com purchase themselves and purchased the catchy domain name GetA.com (Get A .com)

I wasn’t able to discover a price paid, but according to whois records, Verisign Inc. is now the owner of the domain name.

Based on experience, it would appear that Verisign Inc. used a domain buyer/broker to purchase the domain name from the past owner. The email address in whois for the "owner" between April 26, 2011 until yesterday is about as generic as one can get (domain admin) with a PO Box New York address and the email address of "da77@nycny.net" . I have seen that email address before, so that is why it leads me to think they used a buyer/broker to purchase it. EES.com had the email address associated with it and Johnson & Johnson ended up owning the domain after them, for an example. If I had to guess, I would put MarkMonitor behind the "da77@nycny.net" email address.

Anyway…..

GetA.com has a clear marketing message adding the TLD with "Get A", so I would expect Verisign Inc. to use the domain name in some form of advertising.

Verisign is currently forwarding GetA.com to a .com registry service page on its main website Verisign.com.

Geta.com was created in 1997 and then dropped (removed from the registry) in 2002 and has been registered since 2002 with a couple different owners.

http://www.verisigninc.com

The single letter domain name G.me was reserved by the .me registry for several years but a recent change in whois has me thinking that a new owner is in the works!

G.me moved from the .me registry to a generic whois contact information for brand protection company MarkMonitor.

Google Inc. just so happens to use MarkMonitor and the generic DnStination whois information often when they newly acquire domain names.

Google also owns G.co, which they use as a URL shortener. This alone wouldn’t mean Google has obtained G.me, but add in the MarkMonitor connection and the fact that they own another single letter "G" domain, helps.

At this point, it can only be speculation as to who or what will happen with G.me, but I’m putting my money on Google to be the one who obtained it. What they will do with it if they did get it? Hard to say.

There could be a "partnership" between the registry and the new owner of G.me, so it doesn’t always mean that money changes hands on these types of domains held by the registry.

Back in March of this year, Google changed some things up and changed names of it "marketplace" for apps, games and music from Android Market to Google Play. One thing missing with the name change was the matching domain name GooglePlay.com as it was owned by somebody else already.

Google filed a compliant with the National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name as reported by Fusible.com.

A little over two months later and Google has officially won and taken control over the domain name GooglePlay.com according to whois records.

Back on April 18, 2012 some of the whois data changed to Google’s information but any domain name owner can change whois data to say what they want. As of yesterday, all the whois data is changed to Google information and the domain name has transferred to the domain name registrar MarkMonitor which Google uses.

At the time of this article, GooglePlay.com does not resolve but I would expect them to be using the domain name at some point or at least forwarding it to the sub-domain they use for the marketplace Play.Google.com.