For a while now, we’ve known that the owners of the URL Nets.com were sitting on the domain name and hoping to sell it to the Brooklyn Nets for a healthy profit of $5 million. The owners of the site have taken to internet guerrilla warfare tactics to try to get their money, including redirecting the page to various other NBA teams and even Jason Kidd’s personal website.
What we learned today was that the owners of Nets.com are not some young rascals looking to make a quick buck. Rather, the New York Times reports they’re 69 year old Jane Hill of Santa Fe, New Mexico and her son John. Hill owns the small company Cyber Mesa Telecom and has held the domain name since an acquisition in the mid-1990s. She also made seven figures from the sale of Roadrunner.com to Time Warner.
Hoping to make money off domain names tied to popular entities is a classic internet tactic. But the Hills are unique in their needling of the Nets to try to get them to buy, even taunting Mikhail Prokhorov in Russian.
Regarding their tactics, John Hill gave this gem of a quote:
“The one compliment I take to heart is when people say, ‘This is the ultimate troll,’ ” he said. “There’s some joy in that.”
Nets.com currently redirects to an Ebay auction for the domain name featuring a picture of Mark Cuban smoking a cigar. The current bid is over $150,000… which seems like an expensive price to pay to annoy a Russian billionaire.
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