Apple has been on a roll picking up domain names that match products, features and brand names lately and it started with the purchase of iCloud.com / iCloud.org for a reported $4.5M (which I do not believe was paid for "just the .com" because they got the .org as well and who knows what else). Yesterday I wrote about Apple buying the domain name AppleFinalCutProX.com to cover the newly released Final Cut Pro X and before that came about 50 domain names related to products and features announced during WWDC 2011.
Well, today I stumbled across LionServer.com that has recently changed ownership and this domain name fits another product that Apple offers and will release soon! Lion Server is an app for Mac that basically turns any Mac into a server and is available July 2011 for $49.99 in the app store.
LionServer.com was first registered in 2005, then released from the registry and registered again in September 2009 by NURINET according to whois records. As of yesterday, 6/23/2011 the domain name has now changed ownership to DnStination Inc, which is a MarkMonitor service Apple has used in the past.
It would make sense that Apple was the buyer of the domain name.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see LionServer.com do a redirect to http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/ come July 2011.
So it appears that Apple has finally noticed the importance of domain names and owning them. I had talked about the iPad.com domain after Apple announced that product and the domain name went from very little traffic to a bunch and it was mainly all direct navigation to iPad.com! The domain name iPad.com spiked with traffic the day of the announcement and continued showing proof of direct navigation to iPad.com since.
Apple has yet to purchase the domain name iPad.com but it is very likely they have tried and maybe have tried again lately.
6/29/2011 Update: Apple was the buyer of the domain LionServer.com and the domain name now redirects to what I thought.
mike
Makes you wonder why they are spending so much on old fashioned domains like .com and .org when everyone seems so sure they are just going to use .apple for everything in the future.
Dean
Do you know the price on the sale?
BullS
You might want to reg SnakeServer dot com as that their next OS
Oh wait …PigServer is better
Jamie Zoch
@Dean,
I wasn’t able to find one.
Ryan T Malone
@mike – The new gTLD’s are nice, dont get me wrong, but as history has proven, there will always be one central domain that carries more weight than any other.
If you are Apple, then a more relevant domain may end up being a .apple or a .mac, or whatever they go with.
That said… with the limited number of .com’s that are out there, and the central nature of that domain plus the other main global TLD’s (.net and .org), I cant see the .com losing much weight at all. If anything, I can see it becoming more strong.
That’s just my 2c though.