Garmin bought Opencaching.com

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chilehead
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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by chilehead » Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:14 pm

Mr.Yuck wrote:The right thing to do, especially seeing they've already wronged the OpenCaching Network once, would be to relinquish the domain name, but Chilehead is probably right.
Of course I'm right. I'm always right. Just don't ask my wife though.
Does anyone know if Garmin ever made any units with pre-loaded Geocaching.com caches prior to that fateful day in December 2010 when OC.com went live?
The first one I saw was the geomate jr, and shortly after the whole Garmin thing happened, then Magellan had it one their units. I've never seen a garmin pre-load them.

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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by Mr.Yuck » Fri Jan 31, 2014 2:06 pm

A couple weeks later, Chilehead, it seems more likely to me that Garmin would put up a "we're closing down opencaching.com" page along with an explanation, and a link to Geocaching.com. :mrgreen:

Hey, new developement. I opened a free account at dnsstuff.com in anticipation of buying another domain or two to point to this website. You know, they have a bunch of dns tools for domain name owners. I was NEVER aware that you could get historical dns records. Your basic WHOIS lookup only ever tells you the current domain name owner, although you can see the original date of registration (September 15th, 2003, in the case of Opencaching.com).

Well, imagine my surprise that you can see the historical records there! Here they are:
Name Server History
Event Date Action Pre-Action Server Post-Action Server
2003-09-15 New -none- Nameresolve.com
2006-10-26 Transfer Nameresolve.com Powerhosting.com
2007-01-25 Transfer Powerhosting.com Dsredirection.com
2010-09-15 Transfer Dsredirection.com Garmin.com
The original opencaching.com expired 2005-09-15. So Opencaching.com was freely available from then until 2006-10-26, when a domain name squatter bought it. It was transferred to another domain name squatter, overseedomainmanagement.com 2007-01-25. Garmin bought it from them, and likely paid several hundred to a couple thousand dollars for the domain name opencaching.com.

Thus, Opencaching.com was not freely available for anyone in the opencaching network to snap up from 2006-10-26 until the day Garmin acquired it, including our founder RVRoadTrip. He or anyone else would have had to pay several hundred to a couple thousand dollars for it.

Fun facts:
-Garmin owns 325 domain names
-Garmin has registered all 325 on markmonitor.com, a "brand protection" registrar. In otherwords, Mr.Yuck isn't going to be sitting on his computer logged in to his GoDaddy.com account on September 15th, 2014, and "steal" opencaching.com from under their nose. :lol:
-Opencaching.net and Opencaching.org have both been owned by domain name squatters since 2005, although two different ones.
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DudleyGrunt
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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by DudleyGrunt » Fri Jan 31, 2014 2:21 pm

Good info. Thanks!
Dave, OCNA Team Member
For the smiles, not the smilies.
Maryland Geocaching Society

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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by Mr.Yuck » Fri Jan 31, 2014 6:42 pm

DudleyGrunt wrote:Good info. Thanks!
Oh, I'm just full of info from dnsstuff.com, including how many domain names point to Geocaching.com.

I believe it's just a TOTAL COINCEDENCE that the original registration date for Opencaching.com was 9/15/2003, and Garmin acquired it on 9/15/2010. This is because I'm told expired domain names do not become available to someone else for 75 days from the expiration date. I'm convinced Garmin paid a hefty sum for it.
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chilehead
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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by chilehead » Fri Jan 31, 2014 6:57 pm

Mr.Yuck wrote:
DudleyGrunt wrote:Good info. Thanks!
Oh, I'm just full of info from dnsstuff.com, including how many domain names point to Geocaching.com.

I believe it's just a TOTAL COINCEDENCE that the original registration date for Opencaching.com was 9/15/2003, and Garmin acquired it on 9/15/2010. This is because I'm told expired domain names do not become available to someone else for 75 days from the expiration date. I'm convinced Garmin paid a hefty sum for it.
It was obviously a good investment.

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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by Mr.Yuck » Fri Jan 31, 2014 7:57 pm

chilehead wrote:
Mr.Yuck wrote:
DudleyGrunt wrote:Good info. Thanks!
Oh, I'm just full of info from dnsstuff.com, including how many domain names point to Geocaching.com.

I believe it's just a TOTAL COINCEDENCE that the original registration date for Opencaching.com was 9/15/2003, and Garmin acquired it on 9/15/2010. This is because I'm told expired domain names do not become available to someone else for 75 days from the expiration date. I'm convinced Garmin paid a hefty sum for it.
It was obviously a good investment.
You're not even going to drop a smiley after that?
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chilehead
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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by chilehead » Fri Jan 31, 2014 8:12 pm

Mr.Yuck wrote:
You're not even going to drop a smiley after that?
There's an implied smiley whenever opencaching.com is mentioned.

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Re: Garmin bought Opencaching.com

Post by Mr.Yuck » Tue Feb 04, 2014 12:33 am

chilehead wrote:
Mr.Yuck wrote:
You're not even going to drop a smiley after that?
There's an implied smiley whenever opencaching.com is mentioned.
No sign of them throwing in the towel. :mrgreen: When do these new units come out? I just think it would be totally bizarre for them to manufacture units with an official Geocaching.com logo on the screen with 250,000 pre-loaded Geocaching.com caches, and still have that website. It's like a total admission of defeat.
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