Sean, a reader of this blog, alerted me that the Pharmacy.com domain name points to a Wal-Mart website now:
Hi,
It appears that Walmart bought Pharmacy.com.
Do you know how much it went for?
Thanks.
Sean B.
No, I don’t know how much it went for. At this point I can’t confirm for sure that it has been sold, either, because Wal-Mart isn’t listed as the new owner in the whois. It looks like it, though. FairWinds Partners started brokering the domain last year at a $50 million asking price. They sent out about 100 emails to potential buyers. I do know that Wal-Mart was on that list. The domain’s whois currently shows CSC Corporate Domains as the owner and the email address of a law firm. So it looks like the domain is in escrow. If the domain has indeed been sold, it will be interesting to know how much it went for. Personally, I think it’s unlikely that they fetched the $50M price tag, but I can see Pharmacy.com selling for $5-15 million at this point of time.
** UPDATE **
Elliot Silver points out in a comment here that the domain is going through an affiliate redirection, which I didn’t notice, so Wal-Mart apparently doesn’t own Pharmacy.com after all. It’s possible the owner of the domain is just testing its performance through Wal-Mart’s affiliate program.
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Dom,
It looks like there is a LinkSynergy affiliate redirect to Walmart.com. I would imagine this means they do not own the name.
**ANSWER**
Thanks for pointing this out, Elliot. I didn’t notice the affiliate redirection. So yes, I guess they do not own the domain after all.
That is a valuable name.
Now when you google pharmacy.com it has walmarts name next to it. Did they acquire it? Someone did because pharmacy.com no longer goes to fairwind partners..
Also when you click on cache next to the website name on google it shows walmart. Can anyone make any sense of this?
Doug, the domain still shows CSC Corporate Domains as the owner and the name servers it points to belong to Fairwinds Partners. So I guess it hasn’t been sold.
The cached version goes to Wal-Mart, because Pharmacy.com was forwarding to a Wal-Mart page through an affiliate redirect for some time. It points to another website now which is powered by SearchFeed.com. The owner is apparently experimenting with different possiblities to monetize the name’s traffic.