Force.com has been registered since May 20, 1991. The previous owner originally registered it to host the website of his company named Force Technology. However, the domain has been parked since 2005. Despite the fact that he didn’t really need the domain anymore, the owner was reluctant to let it go.

It’s taken a long time for Salesforce.com to get hold of the Force.com domain name that the company unveils today. CEO Marc Benioff told Dan Farber that negotiations took a tough four years. But it wasn’t because the previous owners had a significant revenue stream coming from it. Their attachment was much more sentimental — it was the family name.

The sale price has not been revealed, but I think it is quite possible that Salesforce.com paid more than $1 million for Force.com, taking into account that the original owner did not want to sell the domain at first, and that Salesforce.com was very desperate to get hold of this one-word generic domain and negotiated for a long four years.

(via ZDNet)