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"Domain registrar and web host Network Solutions has been acquired by Web.com. Web.com, an Internet services and online marketing solutions company aimed at small businesses, purchased Network Solutions for $405 million in cash and 18 million shares of Web.com common stock. Web.com's closing stock price on Wednesday values the deal at over $550 million.\nWeb.com wants to create an \"end-to-ed online solutions company\" focused on providing small businesses with access to social media, online marketing and other website services.\nIn its press release, Web.com CEO David Brown says the integration strategy for Network Solutions \"will be similar to our successful acquisition of Register.com, and we will be in a strong position to cross-sell and up-sell our services to Network Solutions' approximately two million retail customers and hundreds of thousands of wholesale customers.\"\nNetwork Solutions was the original domain name registry for the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, controlling the .com, .org. and .net top-level domain names. Until ICANN was formed in 1998, Network Solutions was also the only place that users could buy a domain name.\nNetwork Solutions isn't the only registrar/hosting company on the acquisition block. Earlier this summer, GoDaddy, the word's largest domain registrar, was sold to three private equity firms for $2.25 billion."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/08/03/network-solutions-web-com/>