Area served Worldwide Industry Domain Registrar Website www.name.com Founded 2003 | Owner Rightside Group Products Web Services Founder William Mushkin Parent organization Demand Media | |
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Headquarters Denver, Colorado,
United States Profiles | ||
Name.com is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web hosting company based in Denver, Colorado. The company currently has more than 320,000 customers and 1.9M domains under management, and employs 37 people in 6 departments. The company sells DNS domains, web hosting, email services, SSL certificates, and other website products.
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History
Name.com was founded in 2003, by Bill Mushkin. Mushkin bought the company Spot Domain LLC (Domainsite.com) in 2002. There are multiple registrars NAME.COM LLC uses for reselling: domainsite.com, name.com, name.net, sunmounta.in, alohanic.com, briarwoodtechnologies.com, domainregservices.com.
On January 7, 2013, it was announced that Name.com was acquired by Demand Media. According to 10K reports from Demand Media the company paid $18 million to acquire Name.com.
The current parent company of Name.com is Rightside Group. Rightside also owns the domain registrar eNom, and NameJet, a domain aftermarket. Additionally, Rightside operates a domain registry and owns 40 nTLDs, which it markets through Name.com and other registry partners.
Domain tasting allegation
In 2007, Name.com was accused of trademark infringement by Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. The companies declared the domain registrars Name.com and Spot Domain had registered over 40 domains of various misspellings, such as NeimanMarco.com and BerdgorfGoodman.com. These domains failed to show accurate contact information or provided false details. In the complaint, which was filed in March 2007, in the US District Court in Denver, the high-end retailers sought damages of at least $100,000 per name.
Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman claimed that the registrars were taking advantage of their special status with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to secure misspelled domains during the five-day grace period, and paying only for the ones with valuable revenue. This practice, called domain tasting, resulted in cybersquatting on various trademarked names. Neiman Marcus had accused the registrar Dotster in 2006 of the same infringement. Mushkin, however, denied the accusations of "domain tasting," explaining that Name.com and Spot Domain were merely registrars, caught in the crossfire. He also argued that "the industry is young," and the issues were not clear-cut. In the settlement, there were several stipulations imposed on the companies Name.com and Spot Domain. Mushkin declined to specify the agreement that was reached.
DNS hijacking
Reports of DNS hijacking by Name.com have appeared on the Internet as early as 2010. The registrar will never return a NXDOMAIN status for DNS queries, and instead directs users to an advertising site they operate. When faced with criticism over this practice, the company points to clause of their Domain Registration agreement that relates to "parked domain names".
As of 3/13/2017, the company still participates in this practice and continues to subvert the resolution of DNS queries to parked pages.
Services
Name.com registration of Top-level domains (TLDs), including gTLDs, ccTLDs, nTLDs, and legacy domains, and offers an aftermarket domain brokerage. Service offerings include website hosting, email, Google Apps for Work, SSL certificates, a website builder, WordPress installation and hosting Name.com also supports Two-Step Verification to help users add an extra layer of security to their user accounts.
Bearglecorn mascot
Name.com's mascot is called "Bearglecorn", a mix of bear, eagle, and unicorn, which can be seen on the company’s 404 page and in some marketing material. Rightside filed a trademark on the Bearglecorn in early 2016, citing its first use in 2013.
Philanthropy
The company has supported several non-profits, including a small literary magazine in South Africa, Amazwi, and a local environmental organization, Environment Colorado. Many of the charities featured are small, grassroots efforts, though Susan G. Komen and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are also listed on the company's sponsorship page.
The company has a bike-to-work incentive program which involves payback for a new bicycle. Though the project appears to be at a standstill, Name.com worked briefly on a system of maps for laptop.org, and offered to guide interns in their Denver office. In April, 2008, Name.com sponsored Idealist.org for the Webby’s People’s Voice Awards, which was in turn sponsored by The Public Interest Registry, the registry behind the .org TLD. The event featured a panel of non-profits, including Greenpeace and Wikipedia.