A number of highly valued short and snappy new .co.uk web addresses have been sold at auction.
Nominet, controller of British web infrastructure, sold off a variety of 1 and 2 letter domain names to companies and investors, raising £3 million for the Nominet Trust, a charity promoting online safety and education.
Web addresses like x.co.uk, g.co.uk and fb.co.uk were grabbed by eager bidders, including Facebook, who purchased fb, and Mercedes Benz who opted for mb.co.uk.
A total of 2,831 addresses were sold, which went for the impressive average of £39,000 each. Surprisingly, Google were outbid for the ownership of g.co.uk, which was snatched away by cunning investors Any-Web, who build up and sell on web domains for profit. Recently Google is said to have spent a sum of up to 7 figures for the Columbian domain g.co
The Swedish fashion chain H&M bought up the decidedly regal sounding hm.co.uk.
“It was an auction of the most significant internet real estate to come on the market ever. I don’t think we will see anything like it again.” a domain developer by the name of Mr Hancocks told the Financial Times.
As of August this year .uk is the fourth most popular domain in the world, with over 9 million addresses registered.
