In an attempt to crack down on confusion and protect its intellectual property rights, Apple has acquired the website iCloud.net, previously the home of a small Chinese social network.
The web address now displays a message revealing that the site as it currently exists will be closing at the end of the month, and that all existing user data will be destroyed.
Apple acquired the iCloud.com name back in 2011, buying it for around $5.2 million from Swedish software company Xcerion, which had launched its own “iCloud” cloud-based service in 2007. Xcerion later transferred a further 170 domains to Apple, including iCloud.us, iCloud.eu and iCloud.tv.
It’s not clear how much Apple paid for the iCloud.net domain, and it’s difficult to even estimate without adoption figures for the site’s social network, which it doesn’t provided.
For what it’s worth (no pun intended), the website valuation tool Worth of Web — which bases its figures on public traffic ranking and Alexa Rank data — pins its net worth at just $8k.
All that’s left now is seemingly for Apple to buy up iCloud.co.uk, which is currently owned by the U.K.-based Dennis Publishing.
(As a somewhat interesting tangent, which I didn’t have to opportunity to mention in my regular “Today in Apple history” column because it fell on a weekend, Sunday marked 30 years since Apple acquired the “Apple.com” domain name in 1987, making it one of the first 100 companies to register a .com address online.)
Source: TechCrunch