Sedo (an acronym for Search Engine for Domain Offers and stylised sedo) is a

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

and

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

marketplace and

domain parking Domain parking is the registration of an Internet domain name without that domain being associated with any services such as e-mail or a website. This may have been done with a view to reserving the domain name for future development, and to prot ...

provider based in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

and

Cologne, Germany Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...

. The company is a subsidiary of

United Internet United Internet AG is a global Internet services company headquartered in Montabaur, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The company is structured in two business areas, ''Access'' and ''Applications,'' and has a total of 16 brands and numerous subsid ...

History

Sedo

Sedo was founded in 2000 by three German college students - Tim Schumacher (previous CEO of Sedo Holding AG), Marius Würzner (now COO of Sedo GmbH's German office), and Ulrich Priesner (currently CTO of Sedo) - and modeled after the core concept of Schumacher's Master's Thesis, "Price Formation in the Trade of Internet Domain Names". In February 2001, with 1&1 Internet AG's investment in the business through purchasing a 41% share, Sedo GmbH became an official entity in Cologne, Germany. During the first few months, the company was operated solely by Schumacher and Essmann while Priesner and Würzner finished their studies. Helga Schackenberg became the first employee of the company, followed soon thereafter by Würzner. At the end of the year, Essmann left the company for nearly two years to complete his medical residency. In the meantime, Sedo moved into a bigger office in Cologne in 2002, and Matt Bentley joined the company to serve in Essmann's absence to oversee Sedo's development. Sedo's funding prior to IPO was N.M. Rothschild Holdings . Sedo began planning in 2003 to open a subsidiary office in the United States. During this planning phase, Essmann returned to the company with a desire to lead overseas. Bentley and Essmann headed to America, with Jeremiah Johnston joining the team shortly afterwards as General Counsel. In 2005, the Sedo office was opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), under Sedo.com, LLC. In 2006, CEO Tim Schumacher temporarily joined the Cambridge office to assist with expansion into the US market, and the company introduced

domain name auction A domain name auction facilitates the buying and selling of currently registered domain names, enabling individuals to purchase a previously registered domain that suits their needs from an owner wishing to sell. A Drop registrar offers sales of ...

s. In 2007, Sedo took a minority investment in DomainsBot; DomainsBot's technology later contributed to the update of Sedo's domain search tool. The company acquired GreatDomains.com, a competing online domain name marketplace, from

VeriSign Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the , , and gener ...

on June 19, 2007. Expansion continued in 2008 as Sedo opened up shop in the United Kingdom, an operation headed by Hugo Dalrymple-Smith and Nora Nanayakkara. On February 24, 2009, Sedo purchased RevenueDirect, and formed a strategic partnership with its parent company, Dotster of

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, to take advantage of the latter's services of helping businesses establish online profiles. In March 2009, Sedo provided seed funding for the new start up Bloson.com, a social charity website. Later in September 2009, Sedo acquired a competing domain monetization (parking) site, ParkingPanel, for an undisclosed amount. On February 17, 2010, Sedo helped broker the purchase for the most expensive

.org The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from ''organization''. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by th ...

domain name ever—poker.org—for

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

1 million. PokerCompany.com purchased the domain name. Later that year, Sedo was awarded a

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

record for the sale of sex.com, the most expensive public domain sale at $13,000,000. On February 1, 2012, Tim Schumacher left his role as CEO of Sedo Holding AG to focus on other projects and join the company's supervisory board. Tobias Flaitz, formerly of the privately held German-based

Hubert Burda Media Hubert Burda Media Holding is a German media group with headquarters in Offenburg. It originated as a small printing business, founded by Franz Burda Snr in Philippsburg, in 1903. In 1986, the corporate group was divided up between Franz Jnr, ...

, joined Sedo as the new CEO of both Sedo Holding AG (including Sedo's sister company, Affili.net) and Sedo.

Sedo Holding AG

In 2009, Sedo's sister company within the Adlink Group, AdLINK Media, was sold to the Hi-media Group. This sale led to the reorganization and renaming of the group to Sedo Holding AG in 2010. That same year, Sedo welcomed its sister company, Affilinet, to its Cologne office. Tim Schumacher was named CEO of Sedo Holding AG while retaining his leadership role within Sedo, and Liesbeth Mack-de Boer was named Chief Sales Officer (CSO) of Sedo.

Sales history

Sedo reports the following domain sales as the 20 highest sales they have helped broker since their inception in 2001:

Accreditations & business memberships

Accreditations

Better Business Bureau Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a private, 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization founded in 1912. BBB's self-described mission is to focus on advancing marketplace trust, consisting of 97 independently incorporated local BBB organizations in the Unit ...

(A+ Rating)

Business memberships

corporate family * Internet Commerce Association (Platinum and board member) * Eastern MA, ME, RI & VT Better Business Bureau (Board of Directors)

References

{{Reflist Domain Name System Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts