Most expensive dot org yet goes under the hammer

Forget the dotcoms, the next domain names to rake in the cash will be the dotorgs. A US auction site claims to have just got the highest price yet for one of these beauties – with the sale of engineering.org for $198,895. The prestigious dot org was bought during an open auction on afternic.com earlier this month. The proud new owner is New York-based organisation The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, also owners of mechanical.org. Afternic, flying the kite for the URL financial underdog, claimed the deal put engineering.org in the top-25 most expensive addresses ever sold. "This extraordinary closing is the clearest demonstration yet of the rapidly growing value of top-level domains outside of the rarefied dot com, as well as the premium that an organisation will pay for the ultimate generic domain name related to its particular field," gushed Afternic's publicity machine. But dot orgs, dot nets and the like still have a long way to go to catch up with the mistress of URLs – dot com. Canadian start-up eCompanies splashed out $7.5 million for business.com last December, more than double the previous highest price paid for a domain name - Compaq had previously held the crown after paying $3.3 million for its altavista.com search engine address. ®