United Internet AG, parent company of 1&1 and Sedo, has bought domain registrar united-domains AG from LYCOS Europe for about EUR 34 million.

United-domains AG manages about 1.1 million domain names for 180,000 customers, and is Germany's second largest domain registrar. The company was established in 2000 and is still run by founders Florian Huber (CEO), Alexander Helm and Markus Eggensperger, who will own around 15% of the company in the future.

An official source quoted that the final transaction price will depend on united-domains AG's financial results for 2008.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2009.

United Internet AG, an Internet service provider, engages in the provision of marketing, selling, and other services in the fields of telecommunications, information technology, and data processing or related areas to the e-commerce merchants and advertisers. The company has a market cap of EUR 1.22 billion.