Domain monopoly
Thanks to Aschi from Switzerland. He told me to type www.ricardo.de into my browser. Guess what’s coming?
Funny to see that eBay is not only taking the whole auctions market but the domain names from beaten competitors of the past. This is like taking “scalps”. As you all now ricardo/qxl tried to compete with eBay some years ago. Now they are offline in Germany. Intoko bought the domain then. This is a perfect example for all those fellows on kijiji boards, that always tell to stay calm now because monopoly is not a question at all and the day kijiji maybe introduces fees you could walk away then.
Am 16. Mai 2005 um 05:10 Uhr
Sorry, I do not see the point! I think the story was different:
The story how eBay is now the owner of http://www.ricardo.de is simply a follow up of the point hat eBay is buying what they are not able to beat by competion.
In detail (and the historical correct sequence):
- There (always) was a very successful classifieds site in the Netherlands called Marktplaats.nl.
- Their German version was called intoko.de.
- As ricardo passes by (because of eBays natural monopoly) Ricardo and intoko made a little marketing deal that the domain ricardo and (all) their uses shift to intoko.
- Some time later eBay acquired Marktplaats.nl for over US $300m. And with it intoko and with this the domaindeal with ricardo.de.
And furthermore:
- Yahoo! as an old competitor of eBay is now making big marketing deals with eBay. So what?
- The relevance of the traffic coming for ricardo.de is sooooooo irrelevant for eBay as another fly buzzing around an Indian cow;-)