Guess Who Owns Those One Letter Dot Com Domain Names?

Domain names have become a hot item lately, with several selling for over a million dollars. One domain sold for $9.5 million earlier this year. Have you ever wondered who owns a.com, b.com, or c.com. There are only twenty six letter domains that are even possible, but getting those one letter domains is even harder to get than one letter stock ticker symbols.

To start with, the letters 'a' through 'p,' 'r' through 'w,' and the letter 'y' are all controlled by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, also known as the IANA, the organization which oversees the allocation of IP addresses and domain names.

However, q.com is owned by Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q), which is also one of the few companies that has a one letter stock symbol. This data, voice, Internet, and video services company has a forward P/E ratio of 15 and a PEG of 1.7. If you go to q.com, it takes you right to Qwest's web site.

Would you have ever guessed who owns x.com? The owner is Paypal.com, which is owned by eBay (EBAY). Yet, when you go to the x.com website, it doesn't take you to the Paypal website, it takes you to the Paypal Labs website. Paypal Labs displays some of the various experimental beta products they are working on, such as the MySpace Fundraising Badges and the Facebook Request Money app.

Finally, z.com is owned by who else, Nissan North America Inc., which is owned by Nissan Motor (NSANY), which trades on NASDAQ. When you go to z.com, you end up at the nissanusa.com website. Nissan has a P/E ratio of 12n and a yield of 3.57%.

In case you were wondering about the zero dot com through 9.com domains, they are controlled by VeriSign Global Registry Services and are not active websites.

Disclosure: The author owns EBAY and NSANY.