Wow, United Internet, the holding company that owns my web provider 1&1 announced in an internal letter to their customers today that they have been bought by some Internet consortium from Dubai. They seem to prepare for the post-oil era there and are investing in western technology companies. Anyway, the consortium seems to have some strange policies on foreign domain names. They need to own the domain names that they are hosting. Must be some Arab thing.. In practice this means the Dubai company is currently offering the 1&1 customers to buy their domain names for 1.400 Euros each! The 1&1 customers, and therefore my customers as well, will sign a contract which guarantees them full rights to use the domain names, so just the owner will change. Domain owners that do not agree with this new policy will have to change their web provider. But for me this is a welcome addition to my travel budget. 🙂 I have 5 days (4 + 1) now to decide what to do..