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Apple Buys iCloud.com Domain For $4.5 Million 99

An anonymous reader writes "A report on late Wednesday night relayed that Apple recently purchased the iCloud.com domain from Xcerion for a cool $4.5 million. Indeed, iCloud.com now re-directs to CloudMe.com. With such a hefty price tag, Apple clearly must have serious plans for the cloud in the pipeline..."
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Apple Buys iCloud.com Domain For $4.5 Million

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  • Pizza delivery!

    What?

    =)

    • That's what Onlinepizza.se [onlinepizza.se] is for. Of course, if they somehow make it figure out what pizza you want without you having to tell it...

      Or just let you schedule pizza orders at that, that way when you wake up on saturday with a hangover it will be because the pizza guy just arrived with your pizza. Much better than having to drag yourself out of bed, order pizza and then wait for the pizza.

      • by colesw ( 951825 )
        Pizza Pizza in Canada lets you schedule a delivery for a later time, don't know how far in advance you can do it as I've never used that option :)
      • Clearly you're not an efficient drunk. ;)

        What you need to do is order more pizza than even someone who's drunk off their ass would try eating while you're drinking; the more drunk you are, the better the odds of ending up with way too much. Then when you wake up with your hangover, the leftover pizza will immediately be available at room temperature because you were too drunk to clean it up the night before and you're too hungover to care about heating it. The biggest advantage of this method is that you

      • That's what Onlinepizza.se [onlinepizza.se] is for. Of course, if they somehow make it figure out what pizza you want without you having to tell it...

        This got my attention.

        Apple could totally pull this off, because they do this with their hardware.

        See, Apple dont need to guess what you want. First, they create something pretty, and then they tell you that you want it. It works so well for them that I'm pretty sure if they did it with pizza we'd be hearing about how the iPizza (there is only 1 flavour) really is the best pizza and we dont need all the others any more.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    With such a hefty price tag, Apple clearly must have serious plans for the cloud in the pipeline...

    Or maybe they're just idiots.

    • the iphone data cap is to small to make the cloud work 2GB and then $10 pre GIG?

      • For US home users sure. On our business phones at my work here in the UK, there is no cap on any of our O2 phones, including iPhones.

      • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        You foolishly assume that everywhere in the world is like the USA with stone age cellular networks.

        Don't worry, it's a common mistake, but there are countries outside of the US with decent networks. Some of them you aren't even invading for petroleum distillate.

        • The US has much better networks than Europe. Plus we have 4G LTE deployed, and have created the iphone and android. Of course you will be modded up and me down but that's the breaks. BTW, on Sprint you get 4G and unlimited data. And speaking of wars, I'm pretty sure Europe has started a few all by itself and still continues to be involved in them.
          • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

            The "war" joke was merely a flippant rebuttal to "nowhere outside the US matters" - I thought I'd appeal to the "America, Fuck Yeah!" patriotism. :p

            I would contend that Europe has much better networks than the US, having had personal experience of both (I used to live in the Columbus, OH).

            Here in the UK I am running a month-to-month plan (one month notice period) for $30 per month, unlimited data, SMS and 1000 minutes of voice. This is one of the cheap plans - we just do not have the data crunch and capacit

          • But were they laughable wars like Iraq?
        • You foolishly believe that a US company would do something that would not be of benefit to their US users. Regardless of potential international profits, including the US = more profits.
          • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

            In this case, the OP's assertion was that cloud bases services would be a total waste for Apple purely because US data plans would make them unworkable. I have to assume, given that 60% of their revenue comes from non-US markets, that they have their eye on more than just their US market, thus maybe cloud services aren't a total waste after all.

            "It won't work in the US" is not a valid reason for them to ignore it.

        • by zieroh ( 307208 )

          You foolishly assume that everywhere in the world is like the USA with stone age cellular networks.

          Don't worry, it's a common mistake, but there are countries outside of the US with decent networks. Some of them you aren't even invading for petroleum distillate.

          You foolishly assume that everyone in the US is a warmongering SUV-driving neanderthal who can't be bothered to know the finer points of world geography and culture.

          Okay, well... you'd be mostly right. But there's a few of us out here who aren't gazing intently at our own navel.

          • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

            Oh I know, I almost married one (whether the navel gazing type or the non-SUV owner is entirely subjective) :D

            I lived in the midwest for some time.

    • by blueg3 ( 192743 )

      Or maybe they're just idiots.

      That's, "iDiots".

    • Yes, idiots, because if the past 10 years are any measure of success...oh wait...

  • by Nerdfest ( 867930 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @08:53AM (#35962396)
    I'd guess a web based version of iTunes, with full backup at a minimum.
  • Follow the trail (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nimloth ( 704789 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @08:54AM (#35962398)
    Gigaom says "Apple May Have Snapped Up iCloud.com" because "My source [...] says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn’t responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.".
    EdibleApple says "Apple reportedly buys iCloud.com domain for $4.5 million" because "Gigaom is reporting that Apple recently purchased the iCloud.com domain from Xcerion for a cool $4.5 million.".
    Which on Slashdot becomes "Apple Buys iCloud.com Domain For $4.5 Million" saying "A report on late Wednesday night relayed that Apple recently purchased the iCloud.com domain from Xcerion for a cool $4.5 million.".
    When enough people speculate on the same thing, it apparently makes it undeniably so.
  • Xcerion weren't speculative domain squatters then and actually had a cloud based product... TFA is a bit light on detail...
    • How is it domain squatting, or do you actually buy into the idea that Apple have automatic ownership of any word with an "i" stuck at the front, even though many prominent devices used this prior to Apple? It's not like they were sat on Apple.com or Iphone.org.
      • If they bought this domain and did not use it in the hope that apple (or someone else) would want it and be willing to pay them for it. That is domain squatting. Domain squatting has nothing at all to do with trademark infringement.
  • With such a hefty price tag, Apple clearly must have serious plans for the cloud in the pipeline..."

    Considering the size of Apple, 4.5 mil is chump change. I don't really think that indicates anything about "serious plans."

    • It's a 6 letter domain that only exists in the regulated space that is the internet. It's like buying a phone number. I wish I could get that kind of money for my domains - but apparently I bought land in the Arizona desert of domain space.

      • Good, speculators bring nothing but money drain. GJ on being a parasite.
        • I happen to own six, four of which are my surname and my professional business name, the other two are community-based. Still, if there were a $4.5M pricetag for my surname, I'd gladly hand it over and change my email address (Though if somebody wanted it badly enough to pay me 4.5M, I could probably negotiate a redirect)

    • And yet, it's more than the productive output of the average person over their entire lifetime. Whoever sold it just won a lifetime entitlement of servitude by all around them. And for what?
      • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

        For ownership of a 6-letter word "on the internet".

        Adding "on the internet" to something seems to work for the stupid patents, so it might as well work for some other things too.

    • I know the original owner of Aloha.com and he made a couple million selling it to the tourism board...way back the mid 90s...

  • They've got reserves of $60 billion or so. $4.5 million is like the budget for snacks in the break room.

  • Use for it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jmac_the_man ( 1612215 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @09:00AM (#35962458)
    Now they have somewhere to upload all that iPhone tracking data.
  • by golden age villain ( 1607173 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @09:05AM (#35962524)
    /. feels a bit like OS X Daily today.
  • They made 1000x that in profit last quarter. They have $50 billion in the bank. $4.5 million is rounding error to Apple.

  • by dogmatixpsych ( 786818 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @09:12AM (#35962556) Journal
    I'm a big Apple fan and love almost all things Apple but speculative Apple stories like this are ridiculous for a "news" site. I know it's about "engaging the community" and ad impressions and all that but it seems better to just cover the news when it happens rather than the speculations before it happens. Then we end up with an intelligent conversation about what X means rather than wild conjectures about what the future might hold for our favorite/least favorite tech company. /end karma bleeding rant
  • Sadly, someone beat them to humancentipad.com.

  • I just lost a few gigs through a bad iDisk sync in the Finder. It synced a few files partway through, got interrupted and then resumed by syncing the partials BACK to the server. So the 5 or so files that it hadn't started syncing yet were GONE... and the partials overwrote the complete copies.

    Yay.

    And I'm going to trust them with important stuff? Not likely.

    • And I'm going to trust them with important stuff? Not likely.

      In certain circles, MobileMe is known as Mobile MeaCulpa [allthingsd.com]. Maybe they're going to use the iCloud domain to 'start anew'.

      Again.

  • by PPH ( 736903 )

    Someone squat on iCloud.xxx

  • ...and fake scraggly beard, picks a "THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH" protest placard from the heap, and on the available space underneath, writes with a black sharpie: "iCloud is dot.coming" Goes outside, and starts preaching from the corner.

    *ducks*

  • Wow, a word starting with "i" and Apple didn't sue to get it for free?

    • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

      Yes, funny how the idea of them being an "evil empire" doesn't really translate to the real world, eh?

      It's almost as if it's hyperbole on the internet, inflated to near crazy levels by neckbeard-razor-burn. You know how crotchety that makes nerds! (So much so that I don't believe that's actually a sentence).

  • it has an small "i" in front ... therefore it's Appleesque ... called their buddies at the DOJ and ICE ... coulda had it for free.....

    • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

      Yes, it's a shame they didn't sue to get it, since that would have played nicely into the "Apple is evil" mentality on slashdot. They just don't know what to do when they do things reasonably. Don't worry, it'll get swept away quietly when the next round of supposed "evil" is uncovered. :p

  • Apple has around 65.1 billion in cash reserves right now, 4.5 million is a drop in the bucket.

  • Doesn't Apple hold the patents on clouds? They could've just (threatened to) sued for ownership of anything of or petaining to clouds. Guess somebody was asleep in the legal dept.
  • Better than the lottery? Park every iDomain you can think of!

  • ... isn't that the same thing as "cloudcloud.com"

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