Skip to: Content
Skip to: Site Navigation
Skip to: Search

July 5, 2008 5:31:01 PM CDT

Learn about Newser Points »

Back to the grid

Web Mogul Controls $300 Million in URLs

Posted May 23, 07 6:05 AM CDT in Business,  Glossies    Editor's Choice

(Newser) – Kevin Ham rules the shadowy Internet domain name market, having amassed an online real estate empire worth over $300 million, Business 2.0 reports. The doctor-turned-tech tycoon began buying and selling URLs in the nascent days of the web; today he trades hundreds of addresses a day, sometimes for as much as $350,000.

Ham is notorious among "domainers" for partnering with the government of Cameroon: By assuming control over the African country's unique Internet suffix (.cm), Ham exploited the millions of typos entered into browsers everyday—and redirected users to lucrative ads. And the secretive web titan keeps expanding. "If you control all the domains," he says, "then you control the Internet."

Source CNN

Related News

  • How to Survive the Email Onslaught

    Jul 13, 07 5:30 PM CDT
    How to Survive the Email Onslaught A spate of new survival manuals is addressing the problem of swamped inboxes, writes Salon's Scott Rosenberg. But how does one navigate through the sea of attachments, spam, and forwarded off-color jokes? Most experts agree on striving for emptiness: delete ruthlessly. More »

  ((c) nova3web)
  ((c) Sbocaj)
  (Business 2.0 / Michael Llewellyn)
prev    next
play

Tags

Internet  • computer  • domain names  • web surfing  • computer programming  • web


Loading...

Loading...

Next story from this section »

Today's Most Popular


Other Home Stories

What is Newser?

2008 Codie Finalist

Newser gives you more news in less time. We search for the best and most important stories all over the web, read them for you, and deliver concise and sharp summaries—along with links to the full text. Newser provides a way to stay on top of an ever-expanding horizon of news and opinion—politics, sports, business, trends, technology, personalities, crimes, and controversies. Newser keeps you not just better informed, but, with our signature graphic interface and smart condensed format, more enjoyably informed.

Learn more »