Tuvalu,
the fourth smallest country in the world, is an island nation of about 10,000
people in the South Pacific with a land area of only 26 square kilometers. It
is one of the least developed countries in the world announced by the United
Nations. It struck internet gold because its ISO country code is TV, and it was
therefore assigned the .tv country code domain.
In
the year of 2000, a company named Helvetica acquired the .tv country code
domain for $50 million. Verisign took on .tv for $45 million in 2001 when it
acquired startup .tv Corp and had been operating and marketing the domain since
then. That deal came up for renewal and GoDaddy won the bidding.
The
country’s communications ministry said on its Facebook page that GoDaddy
Registry has won the contract to operate Tuvalu’s .tv country code domain name.
Neither Verisign nor GoDaddy has publicly released a statement about the
switch.
Companies
have adopted .tv domains as online video content has taken off. It is a nice
registry business with high annual registration fees and some domains
commanding premiums. There are roughly 500,000 domains in the namespace.