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! search-engines-
12-14-2005, 05:39 PM
He is credited with boosting the entire market when he sold his portfolio of more than 100,000 domains to Marchex. His names were bringing in more than $20 million a year in revenues -- and $19 million in profits -- when Marchex paid the equivalent of 8.6 times annual earnings, based on figures provided in SEC documents.
A onetime hotshot programmer, Ye used his software chops to build the bulk of his domain empire in the late ’90s and early 2000s. He became a master at what’s known as “catching,” or buying up domains that were dropping because people gave up on them or forgot to pay the annual registration fee. At the time, the system was secretive, and domainers were trying to figure out what names were expiring and when. In the dark of night, Ye would sit before a bank of computers and, like a conductor, launch programs he wrote to shoot rapid-fire requests to purchase names.
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/print/0,17925,1132510,00.html

Chris
12-14-2005, 07:49 PM
This has actually already been discussed here.