Do you remember when Google bought the domain ai.com to lead to Gemini? Well, it seems that Google isn’t the only company buying simple URLs for its AI chatbot. OpenAI just picked up a new domain for ChatGPT, and it’s even shorter than chat.openai.com. You can now access ChatGPT by using chat.com.
ChatGPT has a new domain for some reason
A name like Chat.com isn’t quite unique, so it’s not like one that you could just buy for $20/year on Squarespace. In fact, according to Techcrunch, the domain was first used back in September 1996, nearly 30 years ago. Just last year, Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of Hubspot spent a whopping $15.5 million on that domain.
However, Shah announced that he sold it that same year, but didn’t specify the buyer. Well, it should come as no surprise that OpenAI was the mystery buyer. We don’t know how much the company spent on the domain, but we know that it was A LOT!
The domain is active now, so you can go to it right now. The previous domain (chat.openai.com) is still active. Going to Chat.com will just redirect to the standard website.
Why buy the domain?
It seems odd for a company to scoop up extra internet real estate for their products. If you want to go to ChatGPT, you can just type the name into a search engine. The same thing goes for Gemini. However, it’s not about making it easier to find your favorite chatbot. If you’re looking for Gemini, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll happen to type AI.com by accident, so the URL isn’t helping in that regard.
Buying these domains is more of an act of establishing dominance, it seems. This could be why Google and OpenAI went for such simple and generic terms like “AI” and “Chat.” Buying a domain like ai-poweredchatbot.com wouldn’t establish as much dominance. Owning a domain like AI.com almost gives Google authority over the term “AI” on the internet. “If you want the best in AI, go to AI.com!”
So, this could also be said for OpenAI and Chat.com. OpenAI has a leash on the term Chat in the internet domain space, and that gives it a bit of control over that term.
