The nation of Cameroon owns that top level domain (TLD) of .CM and they are redirecting all unresolved traffic to a very lame and generic PPC landing page which syndicates AdWords results. You can see an example of it at google.cm. They must get significant traffic from all of the typos of users leaving out the o in .com domain names.
Setting aside the ethical issue with basically typo-squatting the entire .com domain space, this could be a great way for a poor African nation to raise some money. However, they could easily boost their revenue by building customized landing pages for the most frequently accessed domains. For example, amazon.cm should either redirect to the Amazon.com affiliate links or a page targeted towards ecommerce. I can’t even imagine how much money they are leaving on the table. The folks at NameView.com, who appear to be providing the landing pages, are doing them an a huge disservice here.
I started researching the .CM situation after I came across a blog post about it on CircelID. I am now trying to determine how I can register a .CM domain name. I have come across a few sites that supposedly offer registration, but the information looks dated and the company in Cameroon which actually manages the registry recently took the page that contains registration instructions off of their site. I will continue to pursue this in the hopes of grabbing a few prime names.
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Have you figured out how to register a cm domain?
i d like to know where to regester a cm dn?
Apparently, in order to register a .cm domain, you must have a local entity/company registered with the authority of Cameroon. In other words, if you don’t have a business, company, etc. in Cameroon, you cannot register a .cm domain. For more information, go to http://www.issociate.de/domain_eng_cm_Cameroon.php
More about .cm domains:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm
Good Job Johnny , I think that no one can register a .com domain , because Mr.Kevin Ham who is called “The man who owns the Internet
” had an agrreement with the Cameron Government to land anything and everything end with .cm to a page that has Ads and they share revenues.
Yeah, the revelation of who is behind the .cm domain name parking is a big deal. It looks like there is little hope for getting a .cm domain name now.
http://www.rwgusa.com/cm.htm
seems like you can for $799
Do you think its a scam?
I think that it is a scam, or outdated. I will give them a call tomorrow though and see what I can come up with.
Seems like a scam…every site I’ve entered in is available even those that I can clearly see aren’t. Something is not right here.
Must be a scam I searched to see if Yahoo.cm or Google.cm was available and it said they were.
They will not let you register any names. I call them, spoke to a guy who handles registration at Agence Nationale des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (ANTIC) some time ago in Cameroon. Got the documents for registrations, Faxed it, and heard nothing.
I’ve been in contact with the entities of ANTIC several times to purchase .cm domains and I’ve received following documents: blacklist on .cm / registration form.
Worst part is I tried to register a .cm applied for it and call the guy again. I notice 2 days after my last phonecall with the person in charge for .cm that the domain has been registered and sold to another person. I called him again to ask more information but “the line broke”.
I have another contact in Cameroon who did the old registrations who helped me a lot (company Camtel in Cameroon). Cameroon aparantly works with contracts to see which company is the NIC for that domain. Antic received the NIc agreement and is doing a poor job.
I’ll keep following this up personally after 1.5 year to keep trying to register .cm domains for custommers of the firm I work for and I’ll try to keep you updated on how/what/when. If we ever manage to succesfully register a .cm domain i’ll let you know and you can all order through us. Only thing we need is a solid contact with the company in charge in Cameroon for registrations.
I applied to register a .cm domain name back on July 7th of 2007 through the Macaria.com website. It’s been 4 months now and all I get from them are excuses as to why it hasn’t gone through yet. I’ve gotten excuse after excuse and lots of broken promises. They were even so bold back in September to tell me that it would only be a few more days. they promised. It’s not even a month and a half past that. I would suggest staying away from Macaria.com, as they obviously scammed me out of my $500 that I paid to register the domain. I am utterly disgusted.
Found a Denmark company that does all registrations in odd places including Cameroon www.web-solutions.dk/domain_registration_africa.htm. I tested google.cm and it was taken, but yahoo.cm shows available, not that I’d touch either one.
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Okay, its not the country… I found out about this in early 2000 when i read about it in i think either one of yahoo’s or aim’s pages talking to the richest “unknown billionaire’s” out there. There is a guy who when he figured this first out that he could register .cm and catch on the typos of the millions of people. He is actually a multi-billionaire just from this.
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