Sell .Travel Domain Name Registry — Theglobe.com To

Firm enters into letter of intent to sell subsidiary.

Theglobe.com (TGLO.ob) has signed a letter of intent to sell its Tralliance subsidiary. Tralliance is the registry for .travel domain names. Sounds simple enough, but this incestuous deal is complicated enough to make your head spin.

The .travel registry almost went bankrupt last year ahead of it was bailed out by majority shareholder Michael Egan. But then Egan was involved in a number of insider dealings that are questionable at the least. Technologist John Levin wrote a good summary of these self-dealings:

Originally, they had strict rules regarding who was allowed to register, basically only members of a list of well known industry associations. As of December 21, they have fresh rules that seem to limit registrants to anyone who shows the faintest interest, with a preference to bulk registrations. (If you followed the history of .aero, the deja vú is intense.) In September, they sold their search.travel search engine for regarding $300K to a firm controlled by Egan, stating they needed the cash to stay in business. Then, as stated by an SEC filing, Labigroup, another firm controlled by Egan, has agreed to buy at least 25,000 .travel domains, producing over $250,000 of simulated revenue which looks an awful lot like taking money out of one pocket, waving it around, and then putting it back in one’s other pocket, particularly since another SEC filing two weeks ago reveals that current owner theglobe.com is selling Tralliance to yet another LLC owned directly by Egan.

Did you follow that? It gets juicier. As stated by posts at NamePros, Egan registered at least some of his 25,000 domains two daysahead of the fresh landrush opened up. In other words, he was able to cherry pick all of the good domains. John Q. Public was waiting around for his chance to register domains, and Egan got first dibs.

Edward Hasbrouck, a noted critic of .travel, also notes that the registry sale may not be consistent with ICANN policy.

Sounds slimy? You bet.