14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon has just purchased several interesting, vanity domain names. A.Co, Z.Co, K.Co and Cloud.co are now owned by Amazon which paid an undisclosed amount for the four domain names.
.co domain names seem to be the latest fashion and are quickly becoming a popular alternative to .com domains, perhaps owning to their similarity.
The .co ccTLD (country code top level domain) is owned by Columbia and is sold by the .Co registry. The registry is just shy of selling the one millionth .co domain name.
Amazon joins Twitter, which owns T.co, Overstock, which owns O.Co, and Go Daddy which owns X.co, with its purchase of the one letter domain names.
Twitter actually got its domain, which it uses for its built-in URL shortening system, for free to serve as a way of promoting .co domain names. It seems that the plot worked. Overstock bought O.co for $350,000.
It's anyone's guess as to what Amazon plans to do with the domains it bought. The letters offer some indication though, A.co could be used by Amazon itself, K.co could be used for its Kindle line of devices and bookstore and Z.co may be used by Zappos.com, the shoe and apparel online retailer acquired by Amazon last year.
What's in store for Cloud.co though is less obvious. Amazon is obviously making big moves in the cloud services market. Amazon Web Services is the largest and best known such service and defined the market.
Of course, Amazon has started offering cloud-based services to regular users, Cloud Drive and Cloud Player for example and is clearly looking to expand that further, likely with the addition of a movie locker service. Whatever it ends up doing, it should be an interesting product. [via TechCrunch]