Google’s massive shakeup today likely brings forward a lot of questions, many of which will probably be answered in time. If you’ve already caught wind of the fact that Google is technically now Alphabet as the new parent company which will now oversee Google and other companies it owns like Calico, Google X, Nest, and others, then you may have already seen the new web address for the online home of Alphabet which is simply abc.xyz. This web address will immediately strike a chord with those who watch HBO’s Silicon Valley as one of the show’s characters owns a company called hooli, (it’s a big tech company) whose web address is hooli.xyz.
The .xyz web address isn’t just recognizable for its placement inside of a hit TV series though, at least, not anymore. Now that Alphabet has registered their own web page under this domain, people will start to take notice of the an individual named Daniel Negari. He’s the founder and CEO of a company called XYZ.com which as you may have already guessed after reading that particular detail, owns domain registries of .xyz. Without even realizing it, Google, or rather in this case Alphabet, has just in a way immortalized Negari and his company. Of course XYZ.com likely got some publicity from use of the domain in Silicon Valley, but not everyone is aware of Silicon Valley. Nearly everyone is aware of Google, and soon enough everyone will be aware of its new parent company Alphabet, and by extension people will soon be more aware of XYZ.com.
In fact, the insanity of it all for Negari has already started. He states that the site is now blowing up with domain registries for the .xyz names just since the announcement from Google and Alphabet earlier this afternoon. To put it all into perspective, Negari says at one point 250 names had been registered in less than 60 seconds. Negari paid a mere $185,000 as an application fee for the .xyz extension just last year with no other bidders, so his application was immediately accepted due to lack of any other applicants. That investment is likely rather small compared to the amount Google probably paid to register the abc.xyz domain, although Negari says that he is bound by a confidentiality agreement so he wouldn’t mention how much the cost for Google. The .xyz extensions are also largely the most popular extension of the 350 new extensions which exist having a total of 1.14 million registered domains, a number which is sure to rise tenfold after today.