Yahoo! puts 'premium' domain names up for auction

Months after Yahoo! started to auction off dormant email IDs, the company has started to sell off unused domain names too. Over the next week, you will be able to help yourselves with domain names like sandwich.com with Yahoo’s auctions.

In a blog post announcing the “domainpalooza”, Kevin Kramer, Deputy General Counsel for Yahoo! said that the company stumbled upon a huge list of domain names that the company has been in possession of since quite some time now. “As we discussed what to do with them, it became obvious that it was time to set them free…back into the wild of the Internet,” he writes. “Surely, creative people, businesses and entrepreneurs could come up with something great to do with them. They could even spark some brand new ideas or companies.”

Fancy sandwich.com? (Image credit: Getty Images)

Starting today, Yahoo! is hosting a week-long auction that includes over a hundred premium domain names for sale. There are gems like sled.com, jockeys.com, crackers.com and blogsport.com up for sale if you’re on for purchasing them. The names are for sale for as low as $100 to as much as $1.5 million – for a short and interesting av.com – for the next seven days.

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These domain names that Yahoo! has found a treasure trove of are going to be put on sale on sedo.com. Kramer writes in the blog post that as the week goes by, Yahoo! will keep adding more domain names that you can purchase. Of course, while Yahoo! says that it stumbled across these domain names, it’s pretty evident that the company under Marissa Mayer is trying to pull users back into the loop with some premier goodies. While it was hard-to-get usernames that were up for grabs, Yahoo! will be looking to make some quick cash out of this domain auction.