Monster.com (MNST), one of the largest human resource recruitment websites in North America, has now signed an agreement with Chinahr.com to purchase 40% of Chinahr.com stock for US$50 million. However even with this new China purchase, Monster.com still lacks its own signature website brand in China.
Both monster.com.cn and monster.cn domain names were registered by a Beijing company, International Networks Information Company Limited, in 1998 and 2003, respectively. As a result, it will be very hard for Monster to get back these two domain names.
Monster plans to expand in China, but it will need to do so on the back of Chinahr.com's brand, which has strong competition from job websites like 51job.com and Zhaopin.com.
Because the two domain names were legally registered to the Beijing company, the recruitment powerhouse might have to spend much money to get its domain names back.