GMO Internet Group, this week announced plans to unify its global strategy under the brand name, Z.com (z.com/en), one of only three single-letter domain names on the entire internet, with GMO Internet Group having bought the domain name for $6.8 million.
GMO Internet Group aims to build its core values and objectives into the Z.com brand as it expands it global presence.
In Japan, GMO Internet Group is recognized as one of the country’s largest providers in domain registration, hosting, ecommerce, payment, online security and online FX trading.
The entire GMO Internet Group will consolidate global services under Z.com to create a new brand representative of the Group’s corporate philosophy and values.
Z.com is one of only three single-character domain names available in the .com namespace, and one of only six ASCII single-character names in legacy generic Top Level Domains.
As the last letter in the alphabet, Z represents “the ultimate”. A graph with an x-axis and a y-axis is just a flat 2D image, but adding a z -axis gives it a third dimension. Z makes the perfect symbol to represent GMO Internet Group corporate philosophy and leading-edge products.
This philosophy has been used by Japanese hardware manufacturers in the past, a notable example being Nissan Motor Company, whose range of sports cars in the 1970s and 1980s arrived on the US market with the letter Z as a suffix to their model number, and were colloquially known as the Z cars. Indeed, GMO Internet Group actually purchased the website address from Nissan Motor Company.
As the world’s most widely used and widely recognized TLD, .com was the natural choice for a global brand. Securing one of only three single-character names available in the space will allow us to build a brand that is instantly recognizable and identifiable around the world and that will come to represent outstanding services.
GMO Internet Group has already established local presences in 16 countries, predominantly in Asia and Europe. Going forward the Group will bring existing global service brands in domain, hosting, forex and other areas under the unified Z.com brand.