VNU pays £16 million for URL cock-up

A 320,000 times mark-up in just over a year. Now that's financial management

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 11th September 2000 11:43 GMT

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Dutch publisher VNU has coughed up £16 million to get involved with Randsatd Holding, the owners of job site newmonday.com, thanks to a hideous URL cock-up last year.

The company has marketed and invested heavily in its own IT job site, jobworld.co.uk, but forgot to register jobworld.com, which was gladly snapped up by IDG. The way the Internet world works means that for all the millions pumped into the .co.uk site, a sizeable proportion of those interested went straight to jobworld.com.

To extricate itself from this monster error, it has eventually found a (costly) solution in the form of newmonday.com. What does £16 million buy you? A mirror site of jobworld.co.uk as newmonday's UK branch. Just goes to show it really does pay to think before you leap. ®

So what is the difference between Jobworld.com and Jobworld.co.uk?

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