Apple has steadily been courting every possible internet entity related to its widely popular cloud storage service — iCloud. And today the Cupertino giant is taking over the ownership of another new domain, iCloud.net, for the said service. This development has been corroborated as the domain name is now registered to Apple.
This purchase was first reported by TechCrunch, who didn’t shed light on the financials of the transaction. But MacRumors, citing an anonymous tipster, says that Apple purchased the said iCloud domain for a massive $1.5 million. However, there is currently no word on the official price paid for the domain.
Previously, this domain was associated with a pretty small-scale social media platform called “iCloud Social Network,” which allowed users to share activities, pictures, music, videos, and other content. This buyout deal is leading to the closure of some unknown Asian social networking website hosted on this domain. It is expected to go offline by the end of February and is currently giving users some time to remove their accounts, whose number hasn’t been confirmed.
With the closure of this social networking site, the founder Tong Lei is giving up on his mission. Thus, in a personal blog post, he says,
We offer social service since 2011, but now, iCloud.net finished it’s mission, it is time for it to retire.
This process started back in 2011 when the Cupertino giant was looking to launch its public cloud storage service for Mac and iPhone users. It had then purchased the iCloud.com domain from Swedish software company Xcerion, who’d been operating their own cloud services under this moniker since 2007. This transaction was given a value of around $5.2 million at a later stage, which was coupled with the transfer of rest of its iCloud-related entities, covering 170 domains. From the looks of it, the decision seems pretty obvious.
However, it is still unclear as to what Apple intends to do with the domain. This development could well be related to the company’s much rumored Snapchat-like video and image sharing app. This application, which will allow users to click pictures or videos, apply filters and send the edited results to your contacts or upload them to other social networks, is expected to debut this year.
