19 ms·

Fuck Domainparkers

• NetBeck 6y ago
  It's a catch-22. "Cool" domains are expensive because they are scarce. They are scarce because having an expensive domain name signals to potential customers a more legitimate service/product. If "cool" domains were abundant, there would be no demand to pay above market price for one.
  • tzfld 6y ago
    There is almost no [commonword].com domain pointing to the most legitimate service/product. In many cases they are even worse, being spam source. So what is a cool domain after all ...
  • sliken 6y ago
    No, the problem is domain parkers pay nearly zero so they can horde millions and profit if they just sell a few. Normal people end up paying $20 or so per year, MUCH more than the domain parkers, and enough that people tend not to horde them without a planned use. Make the domain parkers pay the same as normal folks and things would get MUCH better.
    • NetBeck 6y ago
      How are domain parkers acquiring domains at a discount? Doesn't ICANN charge the same fee for everyone and registrars profit from the margin?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• IncRnd 6y ago
  I think people are looking at this from the wrong perspective. People who specialize in domain parking don't need to pay for their domains. In that way a single person can have many thousands of domains registered for zero to low cost. Like anything else of this nature, this occurs by people never paying on post-billed charges that also include grace periods.
• drenvuk 6y ago
  Make up a word.
  • Hani1337 6y ago
    e-squatters?
    • wolframhempel 6y ago
      Sorry, taken :-D https://who.is/whois/e-squatters.com https://who.is/whois/e-squatters.com
• mam2 6y ago
  > So what's the problem, isn't this a legitimate business? On its face, yes - but it is value-destructive as hell. Generally speaking, the vast bulk of economic activity is value-creating. Ehh.. how is it different from buying land ? Theres a limited ressource and it has a value.. of course some people are going to buy it. You should be happy the whole concept of "renting" a domain name doesn't exist yet.
  • mutatio 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure "renting" a domain does exist - or at least it did years ago.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      Yup. In fact, about a decade ago, I “brought” a domain from a squatter, only to have them refuse to turn over full authority. Apparently, I was just “leasing” it. There was no contract; just a simple payment. I started raising a stink. They made some attempts at barratry, I said “bring it on,” so they rather sourly tossed me the keys, and told me to get out. The idea is that you “lease” a domain to someone, who imbues it with value, and becomes dependent on it, then you raise the price on lease end. If they had actually spent a few dollars, getting a lawyer to draft a contract, I would have been screwed.
  • mcv 6y ago
    Maybe you're right. Maybe buying land only to sit on it, deny others its use, and speculate on selling it at a profit, is just as destructive as this. In fact, some cities have laws against people doing exactly that with houses. And for good reason.
  • strken 6y ago
    Buying land and then renting it out without improving it is the literal origin of the term rent-seeking, and is generally less well-regarded than running a business that actually produces something.
    • 88 6y ago
• dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
  I don't understand why people want to use existing words for their startup or whatever. Being unique surely strengthens your brand through a lack of confusion, improved name recognition and ease of search.
  • tekkk 6y ago
    You don't understand? We have used legible and understandable words for companies through the ages. Making up a new word and hoping people to remember it is much harder than associating it with something they already know - such as "New York Times" or "Facebook". I'm much more confused if I don't understand a name of the company than the one that I understand.
  • tluyben2 6y ago
    They do not only squat dictionary words: also short words, or rather, short randomly generated letter combinations. So your unique startup name has be become longer the later in the life of the internet you start. No-one wants a huge domain.com no matter how unique and nice it is.
• michalstanko 6y ago
  I understand the frustration from having your dreamed-up name taken by domain squatters, however, as we've seen many times, you can succeed with any domain name. Google succeeded despite not having the search.com domain, Instagram didn't have the photos.com, and Uber did not own the taxi.com nor the ride.com.
  • varjag 6y ago
    Though uber.com wasn't "unsquatted". It used to belong to media&creatives startup before that: confused me initially when it pivoted to rideshares :) https://web.archive.org/web/20070605175835/http://www.uber.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070605175835/http://www.uber.c...
  • carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    If only it were as simple as the absolute best and most directly related word being taken. Almost every phonetically acceptable combination of characters as a .com is taken up to 6 letters long. Google would not be able to hand-register Google.com if it were founded today; they'd have to go aftermarket.
  • sails 6y ago
    Can cause some issues, see notion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26113444
• DocG 6y ago
  I agree. This is frustrating and just not nice.
• tekkk 6y ago
  I agree it's terrible and as the things now are, only reasonable solutions I see is either increasing the amount of the "good" domains or just making the renewal price somehow cumulative the more domains you own. But I don't think there is any central authority or entity that could enforce that effectively hence things are what they are.
  • yetihehe 6y ago
    > making the renewal price somehow cumulative the more domains you own Without good way to attribute ownership of thoe domains, they would just split them into different shell companies.
    • tekkk 6y ago
      Sure, but it makes it harder and you could still pursue them for tax avoidance which is a risk a larger company can't really take. There is certainly bureaucracy involved but in theory it could be possible, it is just who could even enforce such law.
  • marcus_holmes 6y ago
    The answer was all the shiny new TLD's we got. Well, big companies got because they cost 100K each (iirc). But in principle we all got. And to some extent that worked - if "yourfavouritename.com" is taken (it is) then you can have "yourfavouritename.tech" or whatever. But there's this superstition about ".com" names in the business, that they're just more authoritative and people won't trust a ".tech" domain. And it does leave you open to someone else buying the ".com" later and giving you a problem. But at least you can get a domain and launch the business, which is something.
• steerablesafe 6y ago
  Probably one of the reasons that startups tend to have nonsense made up words for names? Having said that really good names are probably taken by legitimate businesses.
  • ehnto 6y ago
    Definitely why there are so many .io or .co domains out there. Speaking personally. I would use my home country which I feel makes sense but it gets localized out of international search results whilst .co and .io have gotten a free pass for some reason.
  • marcus_holmes 6y ago
    > Probably one of the reasons that startups tend to have nonsense made up words for names? Yes > Having said that really good names are probably taken by legitimate businesses. And No. Very no. There are lots of really good names out there that are being sat on, doing nothing. Anyone who's started a business can tell you of the infuriating days or weeks spent coming up with good names and then finding they're all being squatted, before settling for some nonsense made up name because "ffs I don't care any more, just hammer something into the keyboard that's available and we'll have that and get on with it"
    • jobigoud 6y ago
      > can tell you of the infuriating days or weeks spent coming up with good names On the other hand it is quite fun to try to think about an original name that nobody else has thought of before. So yeah your days or weeks are in competition with people's years of doing this as a hobby.
      • marcus_holmes 6y ago
        Sure, but are they actually setting up a website for that domain, or is "thinking about an original name" the extent of their involvement? Not that I'm knocking that, if that's what floats your boat. It's just exasperating when you're actually trying to do something else and this gets in the way.
• fn1 6y ago
  My pet-peeve with this: Sometimes I want a domain to offer a free opensource-service, not a business. But the domain costs 5000$ so I cannot afford it, since the service I would offer is free of charge.
  • kolp 6y ago
    Use the dot org. 9 times out of 10, it, or a close variation, will be available.
  • toyg 6y ago
    Use .org, .net, or just append a word like “myappONLINE”, “myappCLOUD” etc
• bennyp101 6y ago
  I can relate to this, I was recently looking to get a couple of domains for some ideas I wanted to pursue, but every name idea I came up with - at least the ones I really wanted - were taken and had a "this domain is for sale" or similar message on them. On multiple tlds. I ended up just searching for available domains that kind of matched what I wanted to convey to use a product name. It is frustrating, but I don't think there is really an answer. - Limit the number of domains per person/business to say, 10, unless you can show that you are actively using them? - Have a 'use it or lose it' type system? Those are not great ideas, and practically are not really enforceable anyway. I dunno, it's annoying but I guess it's up there with ticket scalpers etc
  • thomasahle 6y ago
    > - Have a 'use it or lose it' type system? > Those are not great ideas, and practically are not really enforceable anyway. This is how the .dk and probably many other top level domains are handled. There is a special "domain court" which you ask for a ruling in case a domain seems to be unused and you have a better claim for it.
    • mrweasel 6y ago
      That has been problematic, if I recall correctly. I believe that was the reason Cybercity, an ISP, was asked to hand over large number of domains. Others claimed that Cybercity wasn't using those domains, because there where no websites. The domains had been registered solely to be used as domains for their customers email account, so their where in use. I think the dropped the domains when their stopped providing customers with email accounts. Depending on the court, I can see a large number of cases where someone is forced to hand over a domain, because they aren't using it for a website.
      • lentil_soup 6y ago
        then the problem is the court not understanding the technology. If you are using the domain just for email then sure, that's a valid use case and you can claim the domain is being used
• adventured 6y ago
  While I dislike domain squatting as much as the next tech person that has been watching it for a quarter of a century, the author goes out of their way to evade the elephant in the room regarding their setup. They say: > So what's the problem, isn't this a legitimate business? On its face, yes - but it is value-destructive as hell. [reference to supposedly legitimate businesses] The world is better for these companies' existence. ... Domain-Parking is nothing like that. If it wasn't for domain parkers, you'd still get your domain - just for 10$, rather than 10.000$. You wouldn't get your domain for $10, because someone else would get your domain for $10 instead. It is that simple, they'd beat you to it. How is that any more fair of a determining factor than raising the cost/price? It's not, it's a purely subjective opinion that one determing factor is better than the other, or more fair than the other. It's an argument that having capital to allocate to purchase a domain for eg $10,000 is unfair to everyone else without that much capital. It's false. By that basis, it's unfair for a business to have $500,000 to buy a nice plot of land in a town square to open a new retail shop. Golly gee, what about all the other people that don't have that money. This is a perpetually reducing argument that goes all the way down to the last person with $0 (the person who gets to own the universe because they have nothing, and everything is unfair toward them accordingly; which then breaks the system morally, which lets you know it's a fraud, it's self-contradictory). It means having enough money to purchase a McDonald's franchise - which is like a magic ticket to a forever nice return on your money (at least historically) - is unfair to everyone else that can't (which is 99% of the world's population). It applies to all routine economic activity, all business function (without exception), and is similarly absurd when applied. This business over here can't afford new $10k equipment. It's unfair, the competition can afford it. That equipment therefore should be $1 and it's first come first serve. The company making that equipment must be forced to supply it at a loss forever. All equipment derives from natural resources somewhere (which derives from land ownership/control), it's unfair some people can access those natural resources and others can't. This business over here can't afford to buy a new building. Their competitor can afford a nice new building that draws more customers. It's unfair. Some building owner should be forced to turn over a nice building for pennies on the dollar. Who are these people that get to decide that natural resources like land or building materials are worth something? It should all be $0.01, first come first serve. Norway and Canada should have to give me their oil resources, I want to screw around with a million barrels of oil per day. I have an idea I want to put into action. Who are they to control natural resources? It should be first come first serve, $0.0001 per barrel of oil. Because I say that's fair. Why should someone with a lot of money be able to buy a million barrels of oil and I can't? Everyone that owns a house or yard with more space than deemed fair (who decides? the authoritarians of course), must be forced to turn that space over to someone else that wants to use it (for any purpose). You have no choice in who gets to move into your (whoops, it's not your space really) unused space, it's first come first serve. Welcome to hell. It's unfair that someone else had more time than I did to watch for domain names to buy for $10 in the new system. The counters never stop, that's because the author's alternative will always fail and will never produce the supposed fairness. Any application of this author's premise would implode into absolute disaster economically. Only authoritarian technocrats would propose it could work and be managed, and they'd come up with all sorts of absurd regulations and systems that had to be followed & implemented perfectly in order for it to even function badly. And in the end, the supposed unfairness would persist regardless. It'll always be proclaimed unfair that another person beat you to a domain based on time (first mover). Maybe if someone gets to a domain first, we can just force them to share it, they get to use the domain every other day, or maybe once per year if we want to increase the fairness factor.
• antimora 6y ago
  But I am not seeing from the author an argument that his start-up idea is better then next person's who wants it too. Let's say you got it for $10 but then you sit on it and do little progress. But someone else has a better execution or idea than yours. How is it then fair or better overall? I think It's a perfect way to vote for your business idea: put up more money if you believe if it's worth it. If you were blocked to execute your idea because someone is squatting, then I'll agree but as others pointed out, you're not blocked. You might lose a little money if you really want that domain. Then again you should be able to make up if it's really good.
• yarcob 6y ago
  Fortunately domains don't really matter that much anymore. Address bars in pretty much all browsers are now search bars, and if you type a product name it will typically be the first result (as long as there aren't multiple products with the same name). Sure, programmers like sweet and short domains, but customers don't care if your domain is widget.com, widget.net, widgetapp.com or companyname.xy/widget Spending 5000 on a domain name is probably not worth it for the vast majority of startups. There are some exceptions. If you are an email provider and your customers will use the domain in their email address it probably is a good idea to get a good domain. But I really don't think that domain matters as much as founders think they do.
  • svantana 6y ago
    You're right, but consider the hypothetical that instagram.com was squatted and they instead went with instagramapp.com or whatever. Today instagram.com would be very valuable for advertising and/or scamming purposes. Instagram would probably consider buying it for $500k, a drop in the bucket for them, just to get rid of the problem. In Sweden we've "solved" this problem by a rule that says that if you incorporated the business XYZ then you're entitled to the domain XYZ.se. Incorporating requires $2500 in capital and you can't incorporate as "pizza" or any other common word, so squatting is not a problem there.
    • jobigoud 6y ago
      > if you incorporated the business XYZ then you're entitled to the domain XYZ.se What happens if the domain is already registered? I think I've seen .se used as the ending of english words like say impul.se (first try, seems to be unused or squatted).
      • svantana 6y ago
        As I understand it, they can be forced to hand it over.
  • carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    Sometimes it's about signalling strength, or dealing with a market that's not just consumers under 30. In those cases, I think the customers do 'care', or at least get some conveyed vibe from it. Getting sales from big corps, for example, is often partly about your perceived current state of established-ness.
• kleiba 6y ago
  Domain parking is somewhat similar to buying 100 tickets for the <hot-artist-of-the-day> concert just to resell them at double the price on the black market.
  • aesyondu 6y ago
    I think this is also the definition of scalping (scalpers).
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • thomasahle 6y ago
    And in the same way that ticket scalping is illegal in many countries, so is domain parking.
• hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago
  The solution, I think, is to raise the price. 20x the cost of a Dotcom, most people only need one or two and should be able to afford it, you’ve just increased the cost of squatting hugely. That being said, I’d be scared about domain names raising the price 200x - all providers could literally hold domain renters hostage here, so it’s a double edged sword I guess..
  • chanind 6y ago
    Raising the price would solve the issue overnight. It doesn't need to be a uniform price increase, either - ICANN can guess which domain names are likely to be pricey based on length, dictionary words, or other heuristics. It can't be that hard. There's no reason why every domain name needs to cost the same amount per month. Domain squatters only do this because it's economically viable for them to register 10K domain names and just extort anyone who wants to do anything productive with them. Also, ICANN should directly auction expiring domain names themselves. It's infuriating that when a domain name expires, whoever has the fastest script pays $10 and then immediately resells it for $100K to whoever actually needed it.
    • FDSGSG 6y ago
      It sounds like your proposal would not change anything except who the money goes to, which hardly seems like an improvement.
      • hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago
        I’d rather pay my local government for drugs over a drug dealer who then used that money to do more bad.
        • ryanlol 6y ago
          Your local government would at least attempt to spend that money on useful things. ICANN and the registries are just bigger drug dealers, they too will use that money to do more bad.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• t0r0nat0r 6y ago
  >Thanks to Uber you now can seamlessly hail a ride to wherever you are. Thanks to AirBnB you now have a great alternative to hotels. Thanks to Amazon you can have every item on the planet cheaply shipped to your doorstep. The world is better for these companies' existence. These services would have existed regardless, opersting under other names hd those domain names not been available for purchase in the start up phase. That’s by supply and demand.
  • lentil_soup 6y ago
    I think the author means that those business create value, whereas domainparkers don't
• poisonborz 6y ago
  The problem is that it's a property like everything else. Should we also prosecute who whold on to buildings, cars, huge strips of land without using it? Sure, but now you see the futility of how this would be possible. Anybody can generate a valid looking fake website for "proof of usage" in no time.
  • chanind 6y ago
    This is solved in real life by taxes which make it uneconomical to sit on high value land while doing nothing with it. If it's not high value then who cares, feel free to squat. The problem is ICANN just charges $10/month per .com no matter the value, so it makes it economically viable for domain squatters to buy everything and just extort anyone who comes looking to do something productive. Just raise the yearly price on .coms, or raise the price proportional to how popular ICANN thinks the name will be, or ideally both. If it was $1000+/year for a high-value domain name, and $100/year for a reasonable length .com, squatters would vacate real fast.
    • monodot 6y ago
      The problem with proportional pricing is, who decides the value? If your website becomes successful, and the word "facebook" becomes more valuable, what's to stop ICANN simply increasing the charge? Then it just becomes extortion from ICANN. The new-generation TLD owners already do this with "Premium" names. Google does it with .app. A price is arbitrarily decided for your first year. Who knows what price it might be in a few years' time.
  • disiplus 6y ago
    buying a property to just hold in in hope somebody buys it in couple years for 20x current value just would not work, there are taxes and other costs and it just does not make sense.
• benlumen 6y ago
  Not that I don't agree with the article - who hasn't struggled with this problem? But this problem is as old as the internet itself and part of the culture at this point. In fact, I'm sure you could liken the rush to squat domain names to many present-day internet gold rush crazes. People didn't know for sure that they would be valuable and scarce, don't forget. So yeah - obviously it being hard to get domains you want is annoying, but that seems quite a simplistic and outdated rant for this place.
• keithnz 6y ago
  Oddly I have the opposite problem, I keep having good idea for names and registering them, then I end up doing nothing with them. I think I need to attend domain names anonymous
  • wombatmobile 6y ago
    When somebody eventually wants one of your domain names, do you sell it for roughly the total of your holding cost, thus making the author of TFA happy, or do you sell it for as much as you can get?
    • 88 6y ago
      You buy a car with the intention to use it, but life gets in the way, and it ends up sitting unused. Somebody else decides your car is perfect for them and is willing to buy it off you for far more than it has cost you. At what price would you sell the car?
      • sofixa 6y ago
        The analogy isn't great, because you having car A ( with its advantages, like easy to remember, good SEO, good pun on the company name, etc.) doesn't preclude anyone from having the exact same car bought elsewhere. Domains are unique, cars rarely are.
        • emodendroket 6y ago
          The supply of any given car is finite. I'd like to have a Ford Focus RS but they never sold that many of them before canceling production.
          • ziml77 6y ago
            But from a practical standpoint you will be served equally well or better by a different model of car. Domains do make a difference for businesses though. It's important for them to be relevant, memorable, and easy to type.
• thih9 6y ago
  > [domain parking] is value-destructive as hell I disagree, they provide value by keeping premium domains available for people with money. > Thanks to Uber you now can seamlessly hail a ride to wherever you are. Thanks to AirBnB you now have a great alternative to hotels. Uber started as UberCab.com , AirBnB started as AirBedandBreakfast.com . Premium domain name is not required to start a successful business. > If it wasn't for domain parkers, you'd still get your domain - just for 10$, rather than 10.000$. Or not, it could have been claimed (possibly unused) with the owner not checking their email. I think domain parkers solve this very problem.
  • dtx1 6y ago
    > I disagree, they provide value by keeping premium domains available for people with money. how does keeping domains away from people with little money provide any value? > Or not, it could have been claimed (e.g. for a hobby project that's permanently work in progress) with the owner not checking their email. As long as the owner pays the fee who gives a f? What makes a hobby project less worthy then a professional product?
    • hytdstd 6y ago
      >how does keeping domains away from people with little money provide any value? The value is that the market becomes more efficient.
      • midasz 6y ago
        More efficient how? Rather than registering the domain name via a registrar there's now another middleman and that's efficient? What are you, a manager?
        • hytdstd 6y ago
          By Allocative efficiency.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocative_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocative_efficiency)
    • 6y ago
• fab1an 6y ago
  My completely unscientific perception is that companies that focus too much on getting the perfect domain name from the get go are doomed to fail, and especially so if they buy a domain for more than $1k..
• pistolpeteDK 6y ago
  the solution here in Denmark is very, well - socialdemocratic; The Complaints Board for Domain Names. "A complaint may be submitted by any person who has a sufficient interest in the outcome of the case. The chairman of the Complaints Board decides whether the complainant has a sufficient interest. The Complaints Board decides whether the registration of a domain name is to be maintained, deleted, suspended or transferred to the complainant or to a natural or legal person appointed by the complainant. In addition, the Complaints Board can confirm, cancel, change or refer back a decision made by DK Hostmaster/DIFO about compliance with the terms and conditions of business (”Terms and conditions for the right of use to a.dk domain name”)." (from the official page: https://www.domaeneklager.dk/en https://www.domaeneklager.dk/en) We've used the board in our business once. When we first started our SaaS the domain name we wanted was already taken by another person who seemed to use it for something genuine. So we contacted him/her and decided to wait. In the meantime, a competitor managed to contact the other owner directly and bought the domain name. He then changed the site into one big ad+redirect for his own competing service. We complained to the board, and presented our arguments(+screenshots). He did the same, and we won. The domain was transferred free-ofcharge to us, and we've owned it since. DK's a small country, and something similar might not work for larger countries, but it does limit the domainparking issue. I'm a big fan of it!
  • mdpopescu 6y ago
    I stole something from someone, but I benefitted so all is good! I fail to understand this mentality. It's extremely common, of course, but I just can't wrap my head around it.
    • croon 6y ago
      I'm interpreting (disregarding possible narrator bias) OP as that the person who lost the claim bought a domain unrelated to their business other than it being the company name of a competitor, and redirected all traffic to their own company. Are you interpreting it the same way as me? If so, yes the domain was indeed taken from the person squatting it (but actually worse than squatting, since it took you somewhere else than where you as a consumer wanted to go). And that's something I'm entirely ok with, and in fact applaud.
• numlock86 6y ago
  > $10k buys you three months of rent and ramen noodles which might be enough to get your project off the ground and make the world a startup richer, but if these 10k go towards a domain name, that might never happen. If your startup success depends on a 10k domain name then you should probably rethink the whole thing anyway ...
  • woutr_be 6y ago
    This sentence kind of baffled me, surely the domain name isn't the deciding factor for whether your startup succeeds or not.
    • jobigoud 6y ago
      There was an article on the frontpage today about a fintech startup named pipe with url www.pipe.com. I really wonder how much investor money went in the domain.
      • throwanem 6y ago
        Probably a lot. I've been much more sympathetic to concerns about domain name brevity and pronounceability ever since I ignored those concerns for my personal domain - something I regret anew every time I have to tell somebody my email address over the phone.
      • woutr_be 6y ago
        So if you want to make a quick buck, you find a good domain name, build a fintech, use the investor money to buy your own domain and let the startup die out.
        • benplumley 6y ago
          Or trademark a brand personally and rebrand your company to the trademarked brand by having your company "buy" it from you. https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millions-from-we-trademark-after-criticism-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millio...
• dumb1224 6y ago
  My first encounter of domain parking is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaixin001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaixin001 which is a pretty amazing story when I just started using social media.
• wombatmobile 6y ago
  In Australia, to register a .com.au domain name, you have to demonstrate some affiliation eg a registered company of that name, or a product that has been trademarked with or is trading under that name.
  • theelous3 6y ago
    Same for .ie for Ireland, though it's a bit looser. If it's of interest to the Irish population or your personal interest as a member of that population.
  • Sosh101 6y ago
    How does that work with new ideas? Expecting a startup to have a trademark is a little heavy handed, and obv you won't have anything trading with that name.
    • wombatmobile 6y ago
      You can register a company for $700, then $400 per year. A business name is less. On the other hand, if you don’t want to spend that money up front, you can wait, knowing that nobody else can register the domain (unless they spend a similar amount first).
    • tomhoward 6y ago
      You actually don't have to have the eligible company name/business name/trademark already registered (though you do have to have an "Australian Business Number", which can be obtained online without delay or charge, even as a sole trader/freelancer). But when you register the domain you agree to the policy I've pasted below. So you can start using the domain straight away, but if, before you have registered a matching business/company name or trademark, somebody else can demonstrate eligibility to use that domain, they can challenge your registration and you'd have to hand it over. === Policy Acceptance By submitting this application for a domain name, you confirm that you are eligible to hold the domain name set out in this application, and that all information provided in this application is true, complete and correct, and is not misleading in any way. If any of the information is later found not to be true, or is incomplete, incorrect, or misleading in any way, or if you have submitted this application in bad faith, the domain name license can be canceled and you can permanently lose the use of the domain name. I certify that I understand the agreement and that domain names have a close & substantial connection to the person/business that it is intended to represent.
• chx 6y ago
  > Thanks to Uber you now can seamlessly hail a ride to wherever you are. Thanks to AirBnB you now have a great alternative to hotels. Thanks to Amazon you can have every item on the planet cheaply shipped to your doorstep. The world is better for these companies' existence. The world is better for these companies' existence? That... that remains to be seen. All of these companies are exploiting workers -- it's not just me saying, the UK has recently ruled so. Uber deliberately circumvented the law (google for greyball) which should be a crime but you know, big companies are not pursued for these things criminally. And so forth.
  • BMorearty 6y ago
    What workers did the UK say Airbnb is exploiting?
• cybervegan 6y ago
  Totally lost me at the "Amazon ... is a net good". And maybe because I choose "unusual" domain names, I've found buying them to be relatively straight-forward. There are now so many top-level domains to choose from that you can usually concoct something that works well with one of them. Admittedly, these haven't been names for "startups" - they're for small businesses and local groups, but it can't be that different.
• hit8run 6y ago
  Your business won’t fail because of a domain name. You can come up with something okayish on one of the hundreds of tlds and move on with your life.
• sideproject 6y ago
  I actually started my own project for domain parkers. I hated all the domain parking tools. https://www.newsy.co https://www.newsy.co I had ~30 unused domains. I didn't have time to make use of them, but I didn't want them sitting doing nothing. Newsy converts my unused domains into a content aggregator. I pull in contents from various sources. I built membership features, automated newsletters, comments, adding widgets, analytics etc (and plus a way to monetize by adding your own ads).
  • account42 6y ago
    Please have a look at the title of the submission.
• tannhaeuser 6y ago
  What might be a solution is enforcing tld policies to the effect that a domain owner has to put up a non-generic website or make other reasonable use of a domain within a set amount of time.
• HenryBemis 6y ago
  Where money can be made, money will be made. (DDG didn't return anything with this quote, I think I should coin it!!) With that said, a friend called me one day suggesting that we buy the a domain similar to "cocacola.it" (Italy), as it was available. His idea is that we put ads on that site, and a link to forward to the original "cocacola.com". This way we would collect $$$ from the ads, and perhaps we could sell the domain to CocaCola if/when they discover us. I prompted him to read what is "domain hijacking" and also suggested that if CocaCola (or any other company) sends their lawyers our way, we're f-ed (financially). I like the suggestion some people have already made.. don't google, don't 'test'. If you search the domain name you want, BUY the word then & there.
• budhajeewa 6y ago
  Slightly related question: Would you trust (And pay for.) a service hosted on a free domain name (Something from Freenom, for an example.)?
• miki123211 6y ago
  The problem here is that registrars sell domains for much less than they're worth, thus creating trade opportunities. Handshake[1] has a solution for this problem. Each new domain, instead of being sold outright, is put up for a two-week-long Vickrey auction[2]. If registrars adopted this policy, buying domains just for parking would become much less affordable. I wish ticket sellers functioned that way. This would let artists get the true value of their tickets (which is much higher than what they're usually sold at. Ticket scalpers would also have to disappear, as real customers would be paying the true ticket prices directly to artists, and there would be no opportunity for profit. Disallowing the transfers of domains (with exceptions) is another way to solve the problem. Transfers should be allowed only when the new owner is going to continue using the domain for the same project, which is also transferred over. In all other cases, the domain would be returned back to the pool, where anyone could buy it for the normal price. A similar strategy is already used by some ticket companies. [1] https://handshake.org/ https://handshake.org/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
  • prepend 6y ago
    I don’t think this will help as most domains are parked for a long time, years even. So many of the two week auctions would just be bid on by few people because there’s not interest yet. I think this works better for ticket companies because there’s a temporal element and more demand.
    • salicideblock 6y ago
      It would maybe help if the parkers would compete during these two weeks. This prices from the registrar would be higher and only domains with less speculative value would go into parking. Still makes it a sleazy activity IMO.
    • floatingatoll 6y ago
      I’ve been watching a specific unnamed domain that’s been parked for over two decades uninterrupted, and they increase their minimum price in line with inflation over time, even though clearly no one will ever buy it (because it was temporally relevant to a small city in the 90s and has no further value remaining). It gets resold to other domain parkers now and then, which is hilarious to me since it’s so obviously worthless, but when they churn the domains to a new owner, they lose sight of that twenty-years-unsold marker. Oh well.
• ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
  I think he is missing something fundamental. Domain squatters are attempting to get the maximum value for a domain. Ideally, they are specializing in determining what that maxinum value is and thus refusing to sell a valuable domain for less than that price. This is actually helpful as otherwise some person comes along and buys the domain and makes some crappy website on that domain and it is their pet project so they don't want to sell (or even worse they have no contact info available and the whois is protected). The domain squatter only cares about selling it for maximum value. They want to facilitate a transaction. A bunch of people using quality, high value domains for low value or mom and pop businesses is suboptimal too. The domain squatter is more likely to prevent that and get the domain to the entity that values it the must (ideally). There is a value to that. This guy's critique makes me think he doesn't understand the value of speculators in a market, which is ironic because he has spent part of his career building trading software and working at investment banks.
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
    And I doubt that business is too lucrative these days. For one domain that sells for $10000, there are hundreds just sitting there and bleeding $10 every year.
  • ktpsns 6y ago
    Well, according to your logic the crappy website owner could also sell her domain to the brand new startup. For a price where the revenue supports the crappy website owner, not some absurd buisness. The current domain trading situation is as if some real estate agent would buy all land instead of mediating seller and buyer. If your exemplaric "crappy website" wants to make a good price, there are still domain agents which could help with the deal.
    • xyzelement 6y ago
      That's right. And then it's just a small leap to say that "claiming a domain for a crappy biz and then selling it" is not that different than squatting.
    • 6y ago
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
  I had an app in PlayStore and registered a domain for it. The app didn't take off, never made any money, so I abandoned it and let the domain expire. Now it's listed for $6000!
  • wideareanetwork 6y ago
    The value and the list price aren’t necessarily related.
  • 0xy 6y ago
    Those prices are like sticker prices on used cars in lots. They're the opening negotiation. Generally, when you buy a domain from one of these companies you're dealing with an Afternic salesperson or some other affiliation. These salespeople substantially discount during negotiations. I recently purchased a very premium domain from Afternic for 25% less than the "sticker price". It sucks having to pay them thousands of dollars but in my view I underpaid for the domain considering the marketability of it.
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  > Because everything is f**ing taken. It's not true. I m usually able to find decent names that are not taken. I have no time to negotiate with for-sale domains.
• blunte 6y ago
  This essay really sums up the greater problem and impact of the modern rent-seeking economy. It applies to domain parking, ticket scalping, mass property buying for holiday/airbnb renting, etc. https://medium.com/swlh/the-economy-is-broken-rent-seeking-broke-it-c1a4a94d77a6 https://medium.com/swlh/the-economy-is-broken-rent-seeking-b...
• sethammons 6y ago
  Reminds me a bit of the person who glares at handicap parking spots or suspiciously eyes the seemingly able-bodied person who emerges from their car in the handicapped spot because they feel they could have had that spot when a lot is otherwise rather full. No, if the handicapped spot was available to everyone, someone else would already be parked there anyway and you would still be hunting for a parking spot. That said, fuck domain parkers. Just speculators fucking up my ideas for no value add.
  • bdcravens 6y ago
    Sometimes the "able-bodied" person has a legit reason for the handicapped permit that isn't visible. (For instance, someone with advanced lung disease where stamina is a concern) Likewise for domains. I think many just buy domains with the idea of building something "one day". If it isn't actively listed for sale, it's hard to discern intent.
• wideareanetwork 6y ago
  I’ve never really had much trouble finding a .com domain that I like for my ideas. Latest idea it looks like I’ll have to buy from someone else. But that’ll be the first time ever.
• cushychicken 6y ago
  I used to agree with the author, but having read a fair number of Peter Askew's writings, I've changed my mind. https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/ https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/ Domain names are powerful, cheap marketing that only gets more powerful over time as links are acquired. It can be a huge advantage in driving organic traffic to your online business. Paying someone who speculated on the domain's value early on isn't outrageous. It's like getting mad at someone for buying a piece of real estate on the edge of town, having the town grow around their property, and seeing the value appreciate. The buyer took a risk. Circumstances could have worked out differently. Speculation is a really natural market force. Suck it up, babies. If your product is that good, your investment into a good domain will pay back quickly!
• young_unixer 6y ago
  How many land squatters do you see? Not many, because it's not profitable, even though land is limited and non-fungible. Why is it not profitable? because you have to pay the actual market value to own it and hold it. You don't pay a ridiculously low fee to buy it and then re-sell it at their market value. That doesn't make sense, yet that's what happens with domain names. Are you a non-profit or don't have money? Great, because there are myriads of top-level domains that don't mean "commercial" which will probably have lower prices.
  • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Huh? Land squatting is super popular, lots of RE companies and investment funds have the vast majority of their assets in land.
• AmIDev 6y ago
  Recently I was looking to buy a domain for hosting personal blog + mail. I looked for firstname.tld, lastname.tld and firstnameLastname.tld. Most have been squatted upon, although a few are being used legitimately. Eventually I settled on lastname.onl
  • ziml77 6y ago
    Sucks that they're squatted but even if they weren't it could be very expensive to buy from a registrar. For me lastname.[anything] was either taken or far too costly. Would have been nice to get though because firstname@lastname.tld is a nicer address than me@firstnamelastname.tld (heck I even prefer my firstnamelastname@gmail.com address... except for all the garbage that mistakenly gets sent to me)
• jamix 6y ago
  I fail to see that's wrong with domain parking. You buy a promising domain now hoping that someone will pay you more for it later. If not for those f*cking stock parkers, I'd still be buying TSLA at $10 today!
• jwr 6y ago
  I always had similar thoughts. Domain squatters provide no value to society, just leech on others that actually build things. Luckily, these days there are a lot more TLDs, so one doesn't have to pay the ransom. I think there should be a subscription fee for domains in certain TLDs (especially .com) — so that there is a real cost to holding domains. If you are using it for a business, you will have no problem paying the subscription, but if you want to squat on hundreds of domains, it will quickly make your costs unsustainable. The current system where it costs next to nothing to hold a domain encourages squatting.
  • privong 6y ago
    > I think there should be a subscription fee for domains in certain TLDs (especially .com) I have a few .com's and I pay yearly subscriptions on them. And some domains in other TLDs have "premium" subscription prices which can be 10-100x higher than the normal domain subscription price. > so that there is a real cost to holding domains. If you are using it for a business, you will have no problem paying the subscription This sounds like it would make the cost painful, if not prohibitive, for individuals to own domains in those TLDs. Don't get me wrong, squatting is annoying. But I don't think raising the prices is the right fix, since it may end up with the side effect of making domain purchases in some TLDs only available to businesses.
    • ozim 6y ago
      Don't forget that squatters will just rise the prices to cover holding costs. Instead of $10k silly domain starts costing $50k.
    • quantified 6y ago
      Since domain names are globally unique, there is no solution. The number of name consumptions by name consumers is larger than the number of useful names. If multiple parties want to use a name, only one gets it. Your hobby site is treated equally with any other commercial or social venture of any utility or economic size. Even if that size is zero. Free resources get wasted, free non-renewable are interesting to watch. You and I can both name our daughters “Carla McIntyre”, all uses of their name will be context-sensitive. On many sites, and for email providers, we need to be scoobydoo45478 because there were other scoobydoos that showed up first. Same is going to happen with domain names. At least a squatter won’t be able to claim copyright on the prefix.
• ozim 6y ago
  I am amazed by the examples of proper businesses that bring value. Uber - seeking rent on poor people (drivers) and using them as a tool to fight taxi corporations. Taxi corporations nowadays also have apps where you can order a cab and pay with it. Uber forced this change maybe but we don't need it anymore. AirBnB - helping people who already ruin cities by owning flats/houses for passive income to ruin it even more by making it more profitable. Building a hotel is costly and ruining someone neighborhood by building a hotel is hard. Ruining neighborhood by buying off flats and making them short term rentals is easy. Amazon - well let's not go into how much of businesses they ruined. How much value they create vs how much bad stuff they do is probably not easy to "calculate" but sucking out value from low wage workers and passing it to people who buy stuff online is not what I would call creating positive value. Domainparkers are annoying but they are not sucking value out from poor people and are not externalizing costs to society like those above mentioned companies. Author could get some perspective, not getting some domain name is whining and people are more creative that mostly they don't need to buy off those to run business.
  • xyzelement 6y ago
    I get what you're talking about but value is in the eyes of the consumer. All these ethic concerns holding, I can tell you that my life is completely different with Uber, AirBnB and Amazon than without, and probably most people in the developed world would say something similar.
• ErikAugust 6y ago
  My mom taught me about scarcity with land. She always said someone like Benjamin Franklin said, "Buy land, they don't make it anymore". The same concepts tend to exist in the digital world. They don't have to exist in the digital world, but surprise! Us humans make it so. NFTs, for example. They prove that a particular configuration of bytes, which can be replicated exactly (!) at zero cost, have value to people. Scarcity value. Therefore, only so many "good" TLDs, and names within that given TLD. You can rage against it, but you will end up achieving nothing.
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Fortunately, since this is not natural but artificial scarcity, a lot can be done about it - see e.g. Denmark's approach to domain ownership[0]. On a broader point: > The same concepts tend to exist in the digital world. They don't have to exist in the digital world, but surprise! Us humans make it so. Yes. And that's what's ruining the digital world. People creating artificial scarcity to extract money from trading things that should be freely accessible, instead of finding a business model where one gets paid by contributing something of value to the society. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26422159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26422159
• new_here 6y ago
  While searching for a domain the other day I came across the lovechild of domain squatters - venture.com - which allows you to rent a .com domain for a couple of grand a month. I never thought the bar could go lower.
• holistio 6y ago
  > If it wasn't for domain parkers, you'd still get your domain - just for 10$, rather than 10.000$. Yeah, no. If it wasn't for domain parkers, the fancy domain that a domain parker thinks is worth $10k would have been sold 10 years ago for $10 for some high school student building a website for their dog. Not to mention how facebook.com would be the 1999 face book of Big Cedar High School somewhere in rural America.
• new_here 6y ago
  Domain names seem analogous to property. A good .com gives a business the digital prestige comparable to having a store on 5th Avenue, New Bond Street or the Champs-Élysées. Then there other parts of town (.io, .co, .app and so on) which become gentrified and increase in value as people move into them and start doing fresh things. I once pondered taking out a business loan to acquire a particular .com domain, thinking of it as a mortgage. The thinking was that once it's been acquired you can run your business from that prime property instantly and pay that asset off each month. Then one day if you ever had to sell it you could probably get the same or more for it, provided you hadn't overpaid initially.
  • indymike 6y ago
    There are a few domains that might work that way, but it seems to be more like this: buy domain ⇾ build traffic to domain ⇾ domain value increases The value of the domain is often an artifact of the value of what was hosted on the domain, or an artifact of the value of the brand represented in the domain, but rarely just "awesome name value".
• uptown 6y ago
  Off topic, but thanks Wolfram for creating Golden Layout. I've developed two major platforms using it, and it's been hugely beneficial to the systems I've built.
  • wolframhempel 6y ago
    My pleasure :-)
  • kevincox 6y ago
    Parent appears to be talking about https://golden-layout.com/ https://golden-layout.com/
• Wronnay 6y ago
  WTF - an ex J.P. Morgan employee (look at Wolfram's LinkedIn) who sold several companies is complaining about people who trade with another kind of assets? Can someone tell him that he is complaining about the system which made him rich?!
• intrasight 6y ago
  Worse actually than domain names are social media handles. Type in any random concatenation of two words into namecheck.com and you are likely to find that the domain is available but all the social media handles are taken - and clearly parked. This I don't really understand since you can't sell social media handles. What's the incentive to park thousands of them?
  • bluefirebrand 6y ago
    > This I don't really understand since you can't sell social media handles What gives you that idea? I'm certain that social media handles get bought and sold all the time. Maybe it's against TOS but when has that stopped anyone?
    • intrasight 6y ago
      Yes. I am making the assumption that Fortune 500 companies are not going to do something against the TOS of major social media companies.
      • bluefirebrand 6y ago
        Fortune 500 companies don't have to, they go to the social media company and say "Hey someone is squatting on our handle, here's a bag with a dollar sign on it to force their account to change so we can have it" This is not theoretical, it actually does happen.
        • intrasight 6y ago
          Lots of things happen that are shady. Less shady, as I understand it, is to "rent" out those handles. Because it doesn't violate those TOSs.
• llimos 6y ago
  I would love to see a government policy that differentiates between businesses that add value and those that don't, but I appreciate it's pretty much impossible to define and is unlikely to ever happen. An economy is set up based on trade for mutual benefit, and if all participants have that mindset and use things as they are supposed to be used, it will be mostly self-regulating. But there will always be those who exploit the system and find the loopholes to benefit only themselves, ruining it for everyone else (and necessitating regulation).
• dharmon 6y ago
  On this topic, does anyone know what process GoDaddy follows when they snatch up a domain that has lapsed? There's a domain I've wanted for decades for sentimental reasons. I randomly checked on it a few weeks ago and noticed it had lapsed but GoDaddy had picked it up and was asking $3,500 for it. Obviously I'm not going to pay that, so I'm keeping an eye on it (through searches on other registrars) to see if they drop the price (I'd pay a few hundred bucks for it). I haven't contacted them or tried to make an offer yet, cause I don't want to let them know that someone is actually interested in the domain and ruin any chances I'd have just by waiting.
  • spzb 6y ago
    It's almost certainly not GoDaddy that registered the domain. They partner with the domain resale brokers (Afternic, if I remember correctly) so they'll be advertising the domain on behalf of whoever bought it.
    • dharmon 6y ago
      Fair enough, I was just going off the registration info. But in any case, what's the procedure they usually follow? I figure if I offer then $200 they'll turn it down flat and dig their heels in further.
• andrelgomes 6y ago
  This brings a better case to buy your own "master" domain(s) that you actively use and park your ideas on the subdomains. I would park it in a subdomain of one of my main 2 sites - either my personal blog or freelance company. So I have idea1.mydomain.com, idea2.mydomain.comm idea3.mylongerpersonaldomain.com. Might take a damage on my SEO but an idea so early on are most likely found through personal content creation with links to that site anyways.
• lamontcg 6y ago
  > Generally speaking, the vast bulk of economic activity is value-creating. This is what is known as "rent-seeking behavior" And there's a metric fuckton of it in our economy.
• air7 6y ago
  I think a good solution would be that the base price of .com domain registration go up from 10$ to 100$ or even 1000$ per year for premium domains. Sure, money.com would still be sold on secondary markets for more, but the vast majority of domains sitting in squatters "portfolios" would get released.
  • gen3 6y ago
    I currently own or have previously owned domains that are considered “premium” by namecheap standards. I straight up can’t pay $1000/yr for a personal site/non revenue generating site.
• xony 6y ago
  those guys who parked their sites are angry
• prirun 6y ago
  Another problem is that when domains expire, eg, I don't need it anymore, instead of going into the pool of available domain names, my registrar gets to keep the domain name for a few pennies a year. They put it in their domain auction pool instead of releasing back to the free pool. Because they are a registrar, it costs them almost nothing (18 cents per year) to hang onto the domain name: From https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrar-fees-2018-08-10-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrar-fees-2018-08...: "Transaction-based fees are assessed on each annual increment of an add, renew or a transfer transaction that has survived a related add or auto-renew grace period. This fee will be billed at US$0.18 per transaction for registrars operating under the 2009 or 2013 RAA." One way to prevent this is to: a) require that an expired domain go back to the free pool; b) require registrars to pay regular annual registration fees for all domains they own.
  • kadoban 6y ago
    Aren't expired/expiring domains that are auctioned off, that happens quickly, no? Like days to weeks? So they do go back into the available pool unless someone actually buys it. Disclaimer: I work for a company in this field, only speaking for myself.
  • sfusato 6y ago
    $0.18 is the ICANN fee, but in the .com case you also have to pay $7.85/year to Verisign (who operates .com). Most registrars operate on very thin margins.
    • prirun 6y ago
      You're right; I didn't know this, but it's spelled out here in Exhibit A: https://www.verisign.com/assets/com-registrar-agreement.pdf https://www.verisign.com/assets/com-registrar-agreement.pdf Now I really don't understand domain parking. How can they afford to own thousands of domain names at $8/year when most of them are unpopular?
      • sfusato 6y ago
        Well, most registrars that also run auction houses will auction off the expiring domain names. If nobody bids for them, they will get deleted. As far as I understand it, this won't cost them anything in ICANN/Verisign fees if a domain doesn't sell as there's no renewal involved or anything. There are other registrars (usually, smaller ones) that don't auction off expiring domain names, but rather keep them for themselves. $8/year is not much to offset and if you take in consideration the occasional sale of a domain name, it becomes even less to break even. At least, this is my take on it. Some registrars (eg. EPIK) provide you with the number of WHOIS queries ran against your domain names, the IP's used etc. This is enough information to signal interest or not in a domain name. Also, once a domain expires, they can point it to their own DNS and start collecting a whole new set of valuable info.
• mikhailfranco 6y ago
  The arrogance of domain squatters, Exhibit A: https://milk.com/value https://milk.com/value