Back in 1999, I was fortunate to acquire the domain name, shopbot.com. Within a couple days, I had an offer for 1 million for it (these were the dot com crazy days), but I declined, because I knew it was worth much more. Over the years, I get a few inquiries each year about selling it and what my price might be, to which I always reply "substantial". Its never gone beyond that.
If you do a little Googling on the term "shopbot", you'll uncover an interesting history. Immediately preceding me, it was owned by the search engine giant Excite. They spent millions promoting it as a shopping bot service.
Anyway, I always figured I'd just sit on it, and it would be part of my retirement portfolio.
Fast forward to about 1 year ago, and Ebay has announced a new shopping service called, you guessed it: ShopBot
They're promoting it all over the place, using the domain address
https://shopbot.ebay.com
I'm guessing they'll contact me eventually about a purchase, but I'm kind of scratching my head about why they haven't done it yet. Wouldn't you think they would want to own the domain name for a new product? It seems natural to me.
Another angle is that if they spend millions promoting the term, someone else can step in and buy the domain name, create a new business, and leverage off of the new market awareness.
Wondering if you smart fellas have any advice on what I should do next? I'm pretty happy to do nothing... I know it will sell one of these days. Its a pretty hot name.
I wouldn't mind casually prodding Ebay to make an offer. To that end, if you Google "shopbot", you'll see something mildly interesting in the first few search results
