As per our Up to the Minute news item Sedo announced the purchase of GreatDomains from Verisign this morning. The company hopes to use this move to strengthen their position in North America. While probably Great Domains might not play as much of a huge role in today’s market place from the viewpoint of most domainers, I consider this a significant move. Sedo is part of the United Internet group, a public company in Germany, which also owns hosting giant 1&1. To me this move underlines that Sedo is serious about becoming an even bigger player in the international markets and that they are willing and able to pay the cash it takes to get there.

GreatDomains was originally bought by Verisign in October of 2000 for a rumored 50-80 million – most likely the original deal was more in the 50 million range. Sedo is said to have under 100 Million for this deal (I would hope that the price was quite a bit lower than that).

[Update]: According to a speech held this morning by Sedo Chief Strategy Office Matt Bentley at the Sedo Pro Partner Forum, the intention is to run monthly auctions for high value domains on the GreatDomains site. The site will also be used in order to further promote high value domains to other industries.

[Update2]: Ulrich Essman says: The first domain auctions will start on July 19th.

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• Sedo buys GreatDomains