100,000 Domains Sold for $164 Million

Marchex just paid $164 million to buy Name Development, an obscure company that displays pay-per-click keyword ads on 100,000 domains. It’s not a stock swap either, as $155 million of that was in cash. The seller reportedly built the portfolio by scarfing up expiring domains (including hardware-update.com, previously owned by Microsoft and linked from within the Windows 2000 OS) and replacing the content with pay-per-click ads