It looks like the merger and acquisition activity in the hosting and domain market isn’t slowing down. Multiple European and international hosting and domain name groups have been quietly, and not so quietly, expanding via acquisitions in the last few months. While announcements of mergers and acquisitions in the middle of a global pandemic might sound a little strange you need to remember that in most cases the companies would have been in discussions and conducting due diligence etc., for months. So the deal would have been in the works since before the pandemic kicked off.
Which leads to today’s news….
One.com announced earlier today that they’re acquiring GratisDNS (Larsen Data).
With the acquisition One.com will become the largest provider of domain names in the Danish market. The company has completed several acquisitions in the last year since it received was acquired by Cinven, which is part of their announced expansion via acquisitions:
With Cinven’s support, One.com is looking to grow both organically and through acquisitions into other geographic markets including its core geographic markets of the Nordics, Benelux, the UK and the DACH region (including Germany, Austria and Switzerland) as well as other strategic markets.
The .dk country code currently counts around 1.3 million domain names and the combined One.com group will account for over 400 thousand domains or about 1/3 of the namespace.
The GratisDNS team will be joining the One.com group as part of the acquisition.
Our passion has long been to spread the Internet in Denmark. As we transition to one.com, we are becoming part of a leading hosting provider in Northern Europe, offering new, exciting opportunities for both GratisDNS and our customers. Together, we now stand stronger in the common goal of developing the Internet,” says Peter Larsen, CEO at GratisDNS.
Congratulations to Peter and his team!
