6 ms·

I Got Milk.com

24 points by entelechy 6y ago

codegladiator 6y ago
Why is this being up voted ?
- karxxm 6y ago
  Good question!
- mwakerman 6y ago
  It might be unrelated but this page was mentioned in a fairly highly upvoted comment on a recent top story here. Dan Bornstein is also a relatively well known engineer.
- danfuzz 6y ago
  His brand is strong, perhaps.
iso1210 6y ago
Good for him. milk.com was registered back in July 94, same month amazon was created. I suspect that many people have attempted to get control over it via naferious means in the past, however I also get the feeling the value of domain names has decreased since the early 00s -- how many normal people still type in domain names, rather than typing in "milk" and clicking the first result.
sfusato 6y ago
Check Dan's responses to emails he received over the years. Hilarious! http://milk.com/experiments/ http://milk.com/experiments/
underyx 6y ago
Way to really milk ownership of the domain.
- ksaj 6y ago
  At first I thought this was a Reddit-style pun response, but then I read the linked page. I read it to mean "Yea, I really want to sell it, but it's going to be costly. Otherwise I'm happy to sit on it until a satisfactory offer comes around." Of course, there's nothing wrong with that at all. The page states that research has been done, and there is a perceived value that as of yet hasn't been offered. The domain owner is clearly uninterested in haggling - give the right offer, or no deal.
  - danfuzz 6y ago
    FWIW I don't think he actually ever intends to or expects to sell.
    - oao 6y ago
      I would be willing to bet a very large amount of money that this is the case.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      I have a couple of friends who own various single word or three letter domain names. They universally say that companies attempting to buy their domains tend offer seriously not life changing amounts of money and often resort to threats when rejected. Consider what if Land o Lakes owned milk.com and you demanded they sell it to you for $5k? Bwhahaahahaha!
      - ksaj 6y ago
        > not life changing amounts of money I don't know how high the offers can go these days. But then again, we're not exactly in the dot-com bubble anymore. In 2001 I bet it could have attracted life changing amounts.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        The most a friend of mine got offered for a four letter com domain during the dot com years was $5k. He said he would have sold it for $15k. I checked he still has it.
tga 6y ago
Did anyone ever come up with a workable method of preventing this kind of rent seeking that plagues domain names? The best scalable and impartial methods that I’ve seen mentioned were high renewal prices and limits on the number of domains one could own, but I get the feeling neither one would work when there is even a remote chance of extracting >$10M in the end. Given the current system it’s hard to blame him either — I don’t know whether I would find the altruism to let such a domain expire.
- sliken 6y ago
  Best thing to do would be to charge Joe Random the same rate (on the order of $10 per domain per year) as the company wanting to buy millions of domains. That way it's much less profitable to camp on domains. Currently companies can get domains for pennies, so they camp on millions, hoping to find some sucker to pay top $.
- danfuzz 6y ago
  What "rent" is he seeking?
  - tga 6y ago
    "In public choice theory, as well as in economics, rent-seeking means seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
    - danfuzz 6y ago
      I didn't ask for a definition. In what way does that apply to milk.com? Is the owner seeking to get wealthy from it? And if so, is he also somehow failing to create sufficient wealth in the process? What should he be doing differently right now to not fall on the wrong side of the line?
      - tga 6y ago
        He (like most domain squatters) is blocking milk.com from being used for a practical purpose (from what I can tell), hoping to get $10M+ for no other reason than being the first to register it. He is definitely not creating any wealth in the process.
rognjen 6y ago
This gets posted every few months. Every time I wonder how it's not been taken away for squatting. I wonder if (or rather how often) he's had to go to court. Nissan.com has been the target of a few attacks if I recall correctly and is arguably less valuable and much more defensible (since the person who owns it is actually called Nissan).
- danfuzz 6y ago
  In what way is this site "squatting?" I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you can't get a trademark on simple English words like "milk."
  - dest 6y ago
    what about Apple then?
    - danfuzz 6y ago
      Apple doesn't in fact have a blanket trademark on the word "apple."
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  Because it's not squatting. As the owner of a few interesting domain names, why does everyone think that unless the landing webpage is a fucking advertisement that I have no legitimate claim to a domain? It's exactly backwards. Say I want a domain to use for my primary email address, but it's currently owned by a business with thousands of domains, and is one of a dozen domains dedicated to a tertiary brand nobody has ever given a single fuck about. I should be able to file AND WIN a UDRP claim that just says 'they're not doing anything valuable with this, but I have a clever pun I want to make into an email address.' And the absolute balls of people to get mad at me when I politely decline their insultingly low offers. I totally understand why the milk.com owner wrote this page.
Shorn 6y ago
Domain name registration related shenanigans is so weird to me. Lately I've been getting mail from various folks notifying me that the `.com` equivalent of one of my `.net` domains is going to be available. It's weird to me that it would be worth doing, but I'm assuming they're making money out of it.

I Got Milk.com

24 points by entelechy 6y ago

codegladiator 6y ago

Why is this being up voted ?

karxxm 6y ago
Good question!
mwakerman 6y ago
It might be unrelated but this page was mentioned in a fairly highly upvoted comment on a recent top story here. Dan Bornstein is also a relatively well known engineer.
danfuzz 6y ago
His brand is strong, perhaps.

iso1210 6y ago

Good for him. milk.com was registered back in July 94, same month amazon was created. I suspect that many people have attempted to get control over it via naferious means in the past, however I also get the feeling the value of domain names has decreased since the early 00s -- how many normal people still type in domain names, rather than typing in "milk" and clicking the first result.

sfusato 6y ago

Check Dan's responses to emails he received over the years. Hilarious! http://milk.com/experiments/ http://milk.com/experiments/

underyx 6y ago

Way to really milk ownership of the domain.

ksaj 6y ago
At first I thought this was a Reddit-style pun response, but then I read the linked page. I read it to mean "Yea, I really want to sell it, but it's going to be costly. Otherwise I'm happy to sit on it until a satisfactory offer comes around." Of course, there's nothing wrong with that at all. The page states that research has been done, and there is a perceived value that as of yet hasn't been offered. The domain owner is clearly uninterested in haggling - give the right offer, or no deal.
- danfuzz 6y ago
  FWIW I don't think he actually ever intends to or expects to sell.
  - oao 6y ago
    I would be willing to bet a very large amount of money that this is the case.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I have a couple of friends who own various single word or three letter domain names. They universally say that companies attempting to buy their domains tend offer seriously not life changing amounts of money and often resort to threats when rejected. Consider what if Land o Lakes owned milk.com and you demanded they sell it to you for $5k? Bwhahaahahaha!
    - ksaj 6y ago
      > not life changing amounts of money I don't know how high the offers can go these days. But then again, we're not exactly in the dot-com bubble anymore. In 2001 I bet it could have attracted life changing amounts.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        The most a friend of mine got offered for a four letter com domain during the dot com years was $5k. He said he would have sold it for $15k. I checked he still has it.

tga 6y ago

Did anyone ever come up with a workable method of preventing this kind of rent seeking that plagues domain names? The best scalable and impartial methods that I’ve seen mentioned were high renewal prices and limits on the number of domains one could own, but I get the feeling neither one would work when there is even a remote chance of extracting >$10M in the end. Given the current system it’s hard to blame him either — I don’t know whether I would find the altruism to let such a domain expire.

sliken 6y ago
Best thing to do would be to charge Joe Random the same rate (on the order of $10 per domain per year) as the company wanting to buy millions of domains. That way it's much less profitable to camp on domains. Currently companies can get domains for pennies, so they camp on millions, hoping to find some sucker to pay top $.
danfuzz 6y ago
What "rent" is he seeking?
- tga 6y ago
  "In public choice theory, as well as in economics, rent-seeking means seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
  - danfuzz 6y ago
    I didn't ask for a definition. In what way does that apply to milk.com? Is the owner seeking to get wealthy from it? And if so, is he also somehow failing to create sufficient wealth in the process? What should he be doing differently right now to not fall on the wrong side of the line?
    - tga 6y ago
      He (like most domain squatters) is blocking milk.com from being used for a practical purpose (from what I can tell), hoping to get $10M+ for no other reason than being the first to register it. He is definitely not creating any wealth in the process.

rognjen 6y ago

This gets posted every few months. Every time I wonder how it's not been taken away for squatting. I wonder if (or rather how often) he's had to go to court. Nissan.com has been the target of a few attacks if I recall correctly and is arguably less valuable and much more defensible (since the person who owns it is actually called Nissan).

danfuzz 6y ago
In what way is this site "squatting?" I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you can't get a trademark on simple English words like "milk."
- dest 6y ago
  what about Apple then?
  - danfuzz 6y ago
    Apple doesn't in fact have a blanket trademark on the word "apple."
finnthehuman 6y ago
Because it's not squatting. As the owner of a few interesting domain names, why does everyone think that unless the landing webpage is a fucking advertisement that I have no legitimate claim to a domain? It's exactly backwards. Say I want a domain to use for my primary email address, but it's currently owned by a business with thousands of domains, and is one of a dozen domains dedicated to a tertiary brand nobody has ever given a single fuck about. I should be able to file AND WIN a UDRP claim that just says 'they're not doing anything valuable with this, but I have a clever pun I want to make into an email address.' And the absolute balls of people to get mad at me when I politely decline their insultingly low offers. I totally understand why the milk.com owner wrote this page.

Shorn 6y ago

Domain name registration related shenanigans is so weird to me. Lately I've been getting mail from various folks notifying me that the `.com` equivalent of one of my `.net` domains is going to be available. It's weird to me that it would be worth doing, but I'm assuming they're making money out of it.