A ROSE by any other name.
The great bard, William Shakespeare had no idea when he wrote this line that a name was, in some instances, the most important aspect of a business.
The Internet has certainly changed the face of business. Years ago, it was the business name that was a tradable commodity.
Enterprising people would register a whole series of names and force any new entrant to the market that wanted to use the particular name to pay exorbitant amounts of money to buy the name from the registered owner.
The current tradable commodity is the domain name. Domain names are the business names of the Internet. For example, the domain name www.drugs.com was sold to an anonymous buyer for the staggering figure of $823,456 (US).
In Australia, the cost of registering domain names through Melbourne IT is $110 for dot.com, dot.org and dot.net names and $125 for a two-year registration of a dot.com.au name.
The rush for domain names has been quite spectacular with industry participants describing the growth as exponential. It has also now created a subsidiary industry.
It is now possible to register domain names ending in dot.com.au.nu through companies such as Webology. Why .nu? Nu is the suffix for a Pacific Ocean island called Niue.
One of the world’s smallest countries, Niue lies 565 kilometres south of the Samoas in the South Pacific and is about the same distance northeast of Tonga and northwest of the Cook Islands.
The domain name may well be taken in Australia as a dot.com.au name but could well be available as a dot.com.au.nu name.
