Is 360's sky-high price for purchasing a domain name just the willfulness of a wealthy person or is there some other hidden story?

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On February 4, 2015, Chinese Internet company Qihoo 360 used 1.29 tons of 100-yuan bills to buy the international top-level domain name 360.com from Vodafone, setting a global domain name transaction record.

Of course, Qihoo 360 is not the only company that spends a lot of money to buy domain names. In May 2014, Hammer spent 2 million to buy the domain name t.tt from domestic seller Guo Xiufeng.

As one of the domestic Internet giants BAT, Tencent has also paid a lot of tuition fees for domain name issues. In 1999, when Tencent was still a "little penguin", they were sued by AOL for the oicq.com/oicq.net domain name issue. Although Ma Huateng found a senior lawyer through IDG to deal with it, facing the carefully prepared AOL, Tencent was defeated miserably. In 2000, the US court ordered them to return the oicq.com/oicq.net domain name. To make matters worse, Tencent finally reshaped its brand through Tencent and QQ2000, but lost qq.com.cn and qq.cn in 2003 due to two other domain name lawsuits. In addition, qq.com was "missing", and Tencent did not have any domain names associated with the QQ brand at that time. Finally, Ma Huateng found an American software engineer named Huntsman who registered the qq.com domain name as early as 1995 and wanted to sell it for $2 million.

In the Weibo battle with Sina, Sina threw out three aces: weibo.com/weibo.com.cn/weibo.cn, and the outcome was decided.

Why are domain names so valuable?

In the era before the rise of mobile Internet, the traffic brought by domain names was the lifeblood of a website. At that time, Kaixin.com, as a first-class SNS website model in China, had tens of millions of white-collar users. However, Renren.com used the domain name kaixin.com to divert Kaixin.com's traffic and users to kaixin.com. Although Kaixin.com later used legal means to protect its own interests, it had already lost users and missed the best opportunity to go public. Finally, it withdrew from people's sight after the rise of Weibo.

Coincidentally, as China's leading e-commerce platform, JD.com's original domain name was 360buy.com. The first time I visited JD.com, I thought it was a shopping website under Qihoo 360. However, JD.com's domain name has also been extremely bumpy. One time was when "Zedong"'s love affair was first exposed, zhangzetian.com was forwarded to the homepage; another time was when breakup rumors were spreading some time ago, and naichabiao.com was forwarded again.

It can be seen that the major Internet companies are spending huge sums of money on domain names not because they are rich and willful, but with the advent of the mobile Internet era, is the value of domain names still as priceless as in the PC era, or even related to their life and property?

Domain Names in the Mobile Internet Era

With the advent of the mobile Internet era, website entrances are diversified, such as APP, QR code, which are all traffic entrances to websites. No one will rely too much on domain names, and they will even be gradually marginalized. An author of a Baidu column said: "Mobile browsers are transitional products from PC to mobile Internet, and are only used for transition. With the increase of traffic sources from QR code entrances and third-party software such as WeChat, the weight of mobile browsers will be further reduced, and the address bar function will eventually be weakened or even cancelled. You can directly enter the mobile page by scanning the QR code or third-party entrance."

If someone uses the fact that Xiaomi, which was born in the mobile Internet era, spent a fortune to buy domain names as a rebuttal, I think that if Xiaomi spent more than 20 million yuan on CCTV, it would be like throwing it away, and it would even be criticized for lacking the Internet spirit. When I talked to the CEO of Randian Baijiu, he said, "I don't think we will advertise on CCTV and find a celebrity to say that this wine is soft." For a native Internet product to advertise on CCTV is too low.

The second is similar to mi.com, t.tt, weibo.com... It looks very high-end, but that's all. So the question is, what is 360's intention in buying the international top-level domain name 360.com from Vodafone with 1.29 tons of 100-yuan bills?

What is Zhou Hongyi up to?

360.com is indeed extremely simple and highly recognizable. Moreover, this number implies culture and time, which can cover many businesses and has a lot of commercial space. And it is unified with the name of Qihoo 360, so it is worth buying it at a high price to avoid future troubles. But it is too extravagant to say 100 million RMB. As mentioned above, the value of domain name entry has weakened in the era of mobile Internet. Just like traditional search and even OS, many aspects give way to APP, keywords and various image recognition symbols. Zhou Hongyi did not buy it before the IPO, and now it is so expensive, if there is no major intention, it is really a foolish thing. The columnist of Sina Chuangshiji interpreted Zhou Hongyi's lavish spending this time as follows: "Combining Zhou Hongyi and Qihoo's restart and focus on strategy and ecological layout over the past year, you can feel the true meaning of a domain name transaction: it is a defensive counterattack, a brand reshaping, a strategic adjustment of organizational structure and personnel, and a key global platform action. At last year's annual meeting, Zhou Hongyi exaggerated the sense of crisis and emphasized that the company must "restart" and "focus". At that time, I said that this was Zhou Hongyi's way of eliminating the company's paralysis and complacency, returning to the main business of security, and expanding new boundaries on this basis."

In my opinion, if this can meet the columnist's expectations, 100 million is really not much, but if the child is not doing well in school, can he just change his name? In the final analysis, 360 needs to clean up the internal silt by itself, and the layout of the mobile terminal cannot be solved by buying a domain name.

Finally, let’s take a look at the domain names of the rich that rank behind 360.com.

4. JD.com jumps to the homepage of JD.com.

Price: $5 million

Date of sale: 2013

In March 2013, JD.com spent 30 million RMB to acquire JD.com and replaced its old domain name 360buy.com.

5. mi.com jumps to the homepage of Xiaomi mobile phone.

Price: $3.6 million

Date of sale: 2014

On April 22, 2014, Xiaomi launched its new domain name mi.com, which was acquired for US$3.6 million.

7. Vodka.com jumps to the official website of Russian Standa Vodka.

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Price: $3 million

Sold: 2006

Russia's largest vodka producer, funded by a Russian billionaire, bought the Vodka domain in December 2006.

8. Candy.com jumps to the G&J holdings official website.

Price: $3 million

Date of sale: 2009

G&J Holdings purchased the domain in 2009 for $3 million.

9. Shopping.de jumps to the UnisterGmbH homepage.

Price: $2,858,900

Date of sale: 2008

Unister GmbH bought the German domain in 2008 for $3 million.

10. CreditCards.com jumps to the ClickSuccess homepage.

Price: $2.75 million

Date of sale: 2004

ClickSuccess L.P., an online seller of financial instruments and products, successfully purchased the domain name in 2004, which is also the highest-priced domain name in many years. It should be noted that Casino.com was sold for $5.5 million in 2003, but this transaction also included some other asset transactions.