April 28, 2011 at 9:58 AM ET
We've previously mentioned that Apple will probably get more serious about the cloud computing business and now there's a report that the company recently purchased the iCloud.com domain name for $4.5 million. If that's true, then it's probably quite safe to say that Apple is working on a cloud-based service of some sort.
Om Malik of GigaOM reports that an individual who is familiar with Xcerion — the company who last owned the iCloud.com domain — suggested that the sale occurred:
Until recently, iCloud.com was a domain name and a storage-as-a-cloud service owned by Linkoping, Sweden-based desktop-as-a-service company, Xcerion. Xcerion’s iCloud service has just been rebranded to CloudMe, and the company acquired the CloudMe.com domain on April 5, 2011.
My source, who is familiar with the company, says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn’t responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.
There is still no confirmation of the sale from either Xcericon or Apple, but if it occurred it would certainly fit with reports that Apple is building a service which will compete with Amazon's cloud-storage offerings.
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Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's a bit obsessed with Twitter, loves to be liked on Facebook. She prefers her clouds fluffy, scattered across a blue sky, and shaped like bunnies.