Government Agency Drops NOAA.com Domain Name
NOAA.com is one of the most popular upcoming pending delete domain name auctions at NameJet. The domain name expired on March 3, 2022 and is now in pending delete status. There are currently 24 bids on this domain name, and there are a little more than three days remaining until it works its way through the expiry process and fully deletes. At that point, drop catching services will compete to grab the domain name and auction it.
Whois records show NOAA.com was registered to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Amazon's domain registrar. The NOAA is part of the US Department of Commerce. According to Wikipedia, the NOAA is a has a nearly $7 billion annual budget, and it "forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditions, charts the seas, conducts deep sea exploration, and manages fishing and protection of marine mammals and endangered species in the U.S. exclusive economic zone."
The NOAA.com domain name no longer resolves a working website, but Whois records show this domain name still utilizes NOAA.gov nameservers. Prior to its expiration, the domain name forwarded to the NOAA's website at NOAA.gov.
If auctioned, NOAA.com will likely fetch a considerable sum of money. I would imagine there could be a fair amount of risk to a third party for owning the asset, depending on how it is used. NOAA.com is a 4 letter .com domain name, and there appear to be some companies in that use NOAA as an acronym. If I were interested in being a competitive bidder on this domain name, I would probably connect with my lawyer first to assess the risk.
It's peculiar to see a government-owned asset like this expire.
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