After its record bid on eBay, Inc. earlier
this week turned out to be phony, owners of the domain name year2000.com Thursday put the domain up
for sale through domain broker GreatDomains.com.
This past weekend, Canadian computer consultants Peter de Jager and Cliff
Kurtzman made news when the domain, placed for auction on eBay (EBAY)
, garnered a record $10 million bid. The bid was ruled a hoax on Tuesday,
however, which led to criticism of eBay’s policies.
“If this is phony, it’s a lot of egg on [eBay’s] face,” de Jager told
Internetnews.com earlier in the week. “eBay has to have a reputation, as do
all auction houses, of being a reputable place where a bid is a bid. If they
lose that integrity, they lose a tremendous amount of their value.”
GreatDomains.com said it has security functions in place to protect domains
from hoaxes, including verifying all substantial offers prior to notifying
domain owners and requiring placement of funds into an escrow account while
the domain name is transferred to the new registered owner.
The company has already brokered the sale of a number of high-priced domains
such as Drugs.com, Capital.com, Perfect.com and Promotion.com.
So far the record price for a domain is $7.5 million for business.com,
bought by eCompanies, a new venture headed by
EarthLink Network Inc. (ELNK)
