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This article was published on March 22, 2010

No One Buys Sex (The .Com That Is)


No One Buys Sex (The .Com That Is)

Sex.com was supposed to go up for sale this year in a huge auction with bidding just starting at one million dollars. Speculation ran hot and wild as to who would get the domain.

Would it be a smut king? Or perhaps the animal rights group PETA, who oddly  enough, was raising donations to bid on the pricy and famous domain name. Who got it? Nobody.

Creditors of the company that owns Sex.com filed a petition that has, comically, forced the company into bankruptcy protection. This has stopped the auction. Looks like some creditors are looking to collect the Sex.com assest for pennies on the dollar. So it goes.

Sex.com is one of, if not the, most valuable domain name on the internet. It’s history is chock full of theft allegations, takeovers, and other intrigue. Everyone wants the domain, and people are willing to pay for it. Sure, the auction was going to start at one million dollars, but no one expected it to sell for anything in that range.

The last rumored bid for the domain, before the auction was announced, was some fourteen million dollars.

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Why are the creditors stopping the auction then? It’s actually quite simple. We can safely guess that the company that owns Sex.com does not owe as much as the domain might be worth. So, the creditors are hoping to get that asset on the cheap, and then are going to sell it off hoping to make a margin on the difference.

Not that it is not brilliant, but I wanted to see a tooth and nail dragged out bidding war. Not today, but we still may see one. Until then, this is just one more chapter in Sex.com’s story. It won’t be the last.

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