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The $7.5 million price tag for Business.com paid by two businessmen in 1999 looks like a fantastic bargain now that R.H. Donnelley has purchased it for roughly $350 million.

Business.com Sells For $350 Million

That $100 million for Dictionary.com may have been a bargain for Answers.com. If they had wanted Business.com, they would have paid three and a half times the price.

PaidContent said yellow page and local search firm R.H. Donnelley elbowed aside several competitors at auction for the domain and its connected search and directory services:

The auction was heated, and initially included IAC, New York Times, DJ and News Corp. IAC didn’t end up bidding, News Corp dropped out as the price went above $300 million, Dow Jones couldn’t pull it together in the wake of all the turmoil with News Corp bid, and New York Times was in there until late in the game.

Sky Dayton, current CEO of Helio, is best known for founding the EarthLink ISP. He and Jake Winebaum picked up the Business.com domain in 1999, a few months before the dot-com industry's fortunes cratered on Wall Street.

The big bucks they spent eight years ago seemed nonsensical, but their decision proved profitable eight years later. Now we have to wonder if another domain name sale will ever top the price tag for Business.com.