YouTube Acquires India, NZ Domains For Around Rs. 2.44 Lakhs
Reader Ravi Venkatraman directs us in the comments to this post, to a notification (Pdf) from India’s official domain registry, which states that YouTube acquired the domain names http://www.youtube.co.nz, http://www.youtube.co.in and http://www.youtube.in for a sum of NZ$8000 (around Rs 2,44,000 or 6100 USD) from Rohit Kohli from New Zealand.
Dec 4, 2007 1:56 AM ET
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Comments (7)
Dec 4, 2007 5:17 AM
lucky guy, congratz to him
Dec 4, 2007 9:28 AM
For Google it must be like giving a tip to the hair dresser. I would have sold this domain for atleast 6 times of that cost to some one else. Anyways nice to know :)
Dec 4, 2007 12:23 PM
I dont think so, If you ask for more, they will surely file a wipo,
Dec 5, 2007 1:45 AM
in my opinion they could have continued on with the .com domain. The way i see it is that if there is going to be a lot of UGC content coming from India , it would be up on .com anyway… whats the point of a co.in domain from that angle then. I had argued this point when the initial rumors of youtube starting an India site began as well.
Dec 5, 2007 3:38 AM
given the fact that YOUTUBE is already in Top 10 most trafficked site in India price seems to be justified . 2.44 Lakhs is loose coins for Google .
Greater implication of this news is for startups like Nautanki.TV or Sumo.TV .
what if Google decide to host India centric Electoral debate , start providing a platform for Brands to get User generated Advertisements ,Signature show for Celebrity Blogger , or Shekhar Suman . Video hosting for Newspaper . No one can ensure uptime like google and no one has financial muscle to subsidize Bandwidth . and good thing is that they can Advertise along these videos too . if you look at all this 2.44 lakhs won’t look significant at all . its dirt .
BTW i wonder if anyone here knows about What % of Content on youtube is uploaded from India ??
Dec 5, 2007 3:51 AM
I did not know Indian domains could fetch this much.
Dec 5, 2007 4:03 AM
prashant: more importantly…how much original content are Indian uploading. most of what we’ve seen is copyrighted.
p.s.: speaking of user generated content from India, i’ve linked to a friend’s short film at my blog, so check that out. Then there were the Pentagram-Voice videos..and Soo’s friend had shot a video while on his bike. That’s all the user generated Indian content I remember…