Register.com for $135 Million — Web.com Buys
Sizable registrar agrees to be purchased by modest business hosting and design firm.
Web hosting and design firm Web.com has agreed to purchase privately held domain name registrar Register.com for $135 million. The firm views domain name registration as a lead generation tool for other services such as setting up web sites and hosting, and also sees cost savings of $10 million by merging the two entities.
Register.com is one of the original higher cost domain name registrars, which has stuck to its $35-a-year pricing similar to Network Solutions. It is the tenth largest domain name registrar with 2.36 million domain names as stated by RegistrarStats. That places it just behind Moniker.
Register.com also owns its own portfolio of domain names that its clients let expire.
With the buyout Web.com is also inheriting a lawsuit filed by Chinese search engine Baidu. Baidu’s account was compromised and nameservers changed, apparently due to lax security controls by one of Register.com’s employees.
