35 ms·

.ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

311 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

dpflan 3y ago
This is a great article. It's an interesting phenomenon. How did the `.tv` boom work out? Anyone know registration rates for that domain over time? We are in a big wave of AI hype so the registrations are going to be many for now... """ And it’s just part of the general budget—the government can use it however they want. But I’ve noticed that they’ve paid down some of their debt, which is pretty unusual. They’ve eliminated property taxes on residential buildings. So we’re doing well, I would say. """
- madsbuch 3y ago
  A shame they don't manage that inflow of money particularly well. Instead of giving tax cuts they should treat it like Norway treats income from oil and make a sovereign wealth fund – oh well...
  - dpflan 3y ago
    Right, "remove taxes because of domain sales!"...not a good long-term strategy
    - p4bl0 3y ago
      Yes, and since it's property taxes it also means that this money is redistributed to people already wealthy enough to own their house or apartment (and most probably those that others rent)…
  - gwern 3y ago
    When you're a small incompetent corrupt country, a sovereign wealth fund is the last thing you want. Like dumping gasoline on a fire. Whereas cutting taxes - well, it may not be optimal, but it's harder to corrupt, is transparent and publicly observable, and easy to implement.
    - dpflan 3y ago
      Not following the phrasing: "Whereas cutting taxes - well, it may not be optimal, but it's harder to corrupt, is transparent and publicly observable, and easy to implement." Cutting taxes is harder to corrupt? The removal of taxes is good because the country can't properly collect taxes in the first place?
      - gwern 3y ago
        Indeed. "Please pay us 100 rubles for house tax." "But house tax was abolished last year thanks to the AI revenues!" "Er..." > The removal of taxes is good because the country can't properly collect taxes in the first place? Sure. Look at Russia's infamous 'tax audits'. ("For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.") And then deadweight losses, overhead from dodging it, stuff being driven in to blackmarkets, manipulation of tax regs (the more complicated the better) to subsidize connected oligarchs... The more nominally powerful but incompetent a government is, the worse.
    - madsbuch 3y ago
      This is a surprisingly good argument that me as a Danish person in a well functioning society with almost no corruption forgets. However, one could hope for a bit more ambition on these matters :)
  - onionisafruit 3y ago
    Why would people tax themselves when they don’t need to?
    - madsbuch 3y ago
      I can recommend you to look into the Norwegian case and study general economics. There is a hole repository of knowledge you'd need in order to understand why taxation is important.
- notzane 3y ago
  120k registrations * $30 = $3.6 million last year (minus fees). At the peak (July 2020) they did 140k in a single month. https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tld/tv-TLD_ID-1435 https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tld/tv-TLD_ID-1435
stuartd 3y ago
My cue to mention http://ai http://ai which used to link to the registrar
- judge2020 3y ago
  http://ai./ http://ai./ still works and links to registrar services
  - stuartd 3y ago
    http://ai http://ai works on a desktop browser and opens the same page - this is the page it used to open - https://web.archive.org/web/20220316164406/http://ai/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220316164406/http://ai/
    - judge2020 3y ago
      Not for me, this might be a quirk with Chrome on AT&T using the router's DNS. It does a dns lookup for ai.attlocal.net to find it on the network, instead of appending the trailing dot like it should.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tomduncalf 3y ago
  How does this work? Are there other domains like this? I've never seen it before!
  - steve_rambo 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Dotless_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Dotless_domai...
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    I'm fairly certain "www.canon" resolved to Canon's website at some point (where "some point" is the introduction of domain, 2015), and was not just a hypothetical address: - https://icannwiki.org/.canon https://icannwiki.org/.canon - https://domainnamewire.com/2010/03/17/canon-why-would-you-want-brand/ https://domainnamewire.com/2010/03/17/canon-why-would-you-wa...
rvnx 3y ago
Fun to understand that the reliability of your billion dollar business depends on the decisions of people in Anguilla to hire the right people (like the .to domain)
p4bl0 3y ago
> It’s about US $3 million per month. We do the domains for two years, and so all of our money now is new domains. And if we just stay at this level of $3 million per month for new domains, when the renewals kick in a year from now, we’ll just jump to $6 million per month. Is it actually reasonable to expect a steady $3M of domain creation over such a long period of time? AI is really trendy right now so a lot of projects are sparkling up, and even more ideas of projects… and people buy domain names for all of these, even those they won't ever actually start to build. I would bet many of these domains won't even be renewed, and I would guess that the number of newly created domains won't actually keep up for long.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  tough to say but lots of trends didn't go away they just died down .io never went away for tech you'd think the mobile app development bubble would have popped 10 years ago but it just kept going despite not really delivering value to most people that feel that they need one 2020's .finance is still popping in the crypto space, notably many, maybe even most of those ideas do make revenue for the creator, in comparison to a random registration on a whim that sits in stasis forever I can see the same for .ai domains
  - whatyesaid 3y ago
    .io is simply the new .net, what you get when you can't get .com but don't want to rename. Although .io and .ai are really expensive so I wouldn't be surprised if something new comes up.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      in my world that was true 10 years ago, except it wasnt a cop out: nobody needed .coms but nobody knew it yet because of prevailing wisdom over here .xyz is the new .io and nobody cares about the tld that much at all if you’re relying on users to type in your domain name, or SEO, or some form of legitimacy with an equally as antiquated crowd, you’ve already failed and need to scrap the idea
sarimkhalid 3y ago
Funny...reminds me of how the Island State of Tuvalu really benefited from the .tv domain.
stalfosknight 3y ago
A windfallf.
- 39 3y ago
  Don’t know why you’re being flagged, the way this site editorializes, you’d think they’d correct a typo.
- Gys 3y ago
  A windfall for a leeward (wind) island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeward_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeward_Islands
ado__dev 3y ago
I wish they didn't require a minimum of 2 years for domain registrations.
- account42 3y ago
  I wish all domain registrations had a minimum of at least ten years. We should encourage URLs that stay around and discourage speculators and other squatters.
- gwern 3y ago
  The reason you wish they didn't require a 2-year prepayment is the same reason they probably want to impose that requirement.
jakub_g 3y ago
$3M per month, 15k residents, so roughly $200 per resident per month. Not bad.
- giarc 3y ago
  "They’ve eliminated property taxes on residential buildings." What a great thing for the country.
  - donmcronald 3y ago
    > What a great thing for the country. Not necessarily. The risk with any kind of external subsidy is that it may not last forever. Imagine if that happened wherever you live. Once everyone's accustomed to $0 in property tax, what would happen if you suddenly had to put those taxes back in place? Would it stall the economy if the tax burden was high enough? IMHO, the best way to deal with windfall money like that is to put it into a wealth fund or use it to build infrastructure. That way you don't become dependent on it and, if the money stops flowing after a while, you at least have some long term infrastructure to show for it.
    - berkes 3y ago
      As per the article, the first thing they did was not the elimination of the tax, but paying off debts. Which is lasting. Arguably more so than a trust fund.
mholt 3y ago
I've said it before [0-4], I'll say it again -- mind your TLD. They have about as much control and influence over your traffic as a VPN, except even your users are at their mercy. Do not choose a TLD based on trends. [0]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1686148772831846402 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1686148772831846402 "TLDs are almost as bad as VPNs in terms of the magnitude of trust you need to commit to another entity for your online survival. Always do thorough research before choosing a TLD." [1]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1613228573015568386 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1613228573015568386 "TLD registries set their own prices. PS: .io is operated by Indian Ocean Territory. Then, "In 2017, a researcher managed to take control of four of the seven authoritative name servers for the .io domain."" [2]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1688603657716248576 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1688603657716248576 "Every company I consult with, I advise them to choose TLDs like you would email providers, web hosts, VPNs, and ISPs! They carry heavy risks." [3]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/900740252498665472 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/900740252498665472 "(Note the 1500% increase in price for the .hosting TLD.)" [4]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1598092186024755200 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1598092186024755200 "Many TLDs are unregulated and put your business at risk"
- whalesalad 3y ago
  Basing your entire business on a ccTLD is very risky. All it takes is a coup and boom you’re toast.
  - arlcode 3y ago
    It may be a good choice if it is your local ccTLD, your country is fairly stable and your customers are fine with it. For example .de is the perfect choice if you are a German company servicing primarily the German market.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Most businesses own their brand name under at least a few TLD's. It's fairly easy to shift customers over from yourbrand.com to yourbrand.org. And you'd be smart to have your mobile app fall back to a backup domain if your main domain is uncontactable.
whycome 3y ago
Tuvalu (.tv), Libya (.ly), Anguilla (.ai). Matt of wordpress got ma.tt (Trinidad & Tobago). Some countries (eg, Canada) require some kind of residency. What other TLDs are special?
- jszymborski 3y ago
  .io quite infamously https://www.thewebmaster.com/archived/io-tld-top-level-domain/ https://www.thewebmaster.com/archived/io-tld-top-level-domai...
  - whycome 3y ago
    I legit didn't realize that .io was a TLD for a country/state. Also, that article is wild! In the future, we'll have a coup in some country and it will cause web chaos just from the TLD issue. (I've seen first-hand how some countries handle their ccTLDs...)
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      > I legit didn't realize that .io was a TLD for a country/state. All two-letter TLDs are. Now that you know the pattern, you'll be able to identify all the other ccTLDs as well.
      - dataflow 3y ago
        For some definition of country/state that includes .eu and such...
        wongarsu 3y ago
        Yeah, Country Code TLDs is a bit of a misnomer, it's more "regions and territories". Lots of islands, lots of of countries with spotty international recognition, a couple countries that no longer exist (like the Soviet Union), and a couple "regions" (EU, Antarctic)
    - progbits 3y ago
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Everyone should have learned from .io that this is risky. Thought after the fallout from that there seemed to be a trend away from those ccTLDs and back to traditional ones and then of course the big release of so many new ones that gave lots of options, the ccTLDs as 'trendy' shouldn't be a thing anymore.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  I'm always surprised when I see people building businesses on any of the ccTLDs. The only one I would use is .ca, but that's because I'm from Canada. There are no guarantees with ccTLDs and any problems that come up might be exacerbated by language and cultural barriers. Regardless, I have the .co, .me, and .io that match my best .com domain even though I'll never use them. I'd do the same for .ai, but it's too expensive. Even the new gTLDs are iffy depending on your risk tolerance. In my opinion, the only truly "safe" domains since ICANN removed most price controls [1] are .com and .net. Also, many of the new gTLD registries are owned by Ethos Capital via Identity Digital [2] (Donuts + Afilias). > In January 2021, Ethos Capital acquired Donuts after their failed bid to gain control over the .org internet domain. [3] Similar to ccTLDs, I'd only register domains on many of the new gTLDs for brand protection and wouldn't use them or rely on them. I wouldn't say to never use those TLDs, but I would use a strategy that only relies on them for shortening URLs and redirecting traffic to top tier TLDs. For example: somecompany.balloons --> somecompanyballoons.com And never let a non-premium new gTLD registration lapse if there's a chance you want to use it. AFAIK, domains can't be reclassified as premium while they're registered, but they can, and do, get reclassified after expiration. 1. https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-all-price-caps-on-org-domain-names/ https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Digital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Digital 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(company)
- account42 3y ago
  I'd pick a ccTLD of a stable country over a nuTLD any day.
sammyteee 3y ago
I miss .tk :'(
blueyes 3y ago
typo in headline "windfallf" @dang
- dang 3y ago
  fixedf. thanks!
  - Razengan 3y ago
    Dang, why was "The Best Headset Yet" removed from the title of this Apple Vision Pro review post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190468 but "Magic, until it's not" is left standing in this post's title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190506
    - dang 3y ago
      I'm afraid it was probably just random.
rob 3y ago
Domain registration used to be free until like 1995 or so. Crazy what it has become.
foxmoss 3y ago
It's odd ICANN has such a control to effect an countries income just by choosing a good abbreviation. I doubt the creators of the DNS system had any idea that domains would arbitrarily give some countries an extra form of income, profiting from people who could care less about the country it was created for. Why didn't ICANN just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?
- Spray3610 3y ago
  ICANN does not pick the abbreviations. ISO does.
  - srhngpr 3y ago
    ISO3166-1 alpha-2 to be exact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    It's odd ISO has such a control to effect an countries income just by choosing a good abbreviation. I doubt the creators of the DNS system had any idea that domains would arbitrarily give some countries an extra form of income, profiting from people who could care less about the country it was created for. Why didn't ISO just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?
    - dharmab 3y ago
      ISO created the country codes in 1974, prior to the invention of DNS.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Haha, this is both informative and deadpan. Thanks. :)
        reactordev 3y ago
vavooom 3y ago
I am personally a fan of using the .dev TLD. Any alternatives/ issues with it I should be aware of?
- mroche 3y ago
  I have a .com and .dev myself. I used to have a .io as well, but I made the decision to avoid ccTLDs. The only issues I've seen from .dev is: - It's owned by Google (opinions differ). Google owns a lot more TLDs than I thought...[0]. - Like .app, it requires TLS for web hosting (good for production, annoying for local work). - Not all services that host DNS support it. For example, Cloudflare's registrar[1] didn't support .dev until August '23. I don't believe the deprecation of Google Domains has any impact on the Google Registry side of things, but I could be wrong. I transferred my domain out of GD once my preferred registrar supported it. [0] https://www.registry.google/ https://www.registry.google/ TLDs: meme, ing, app, day, new, soy, dev, dad, foo, mov, nexus, how, esq, rsvp, page, phd, prof, zip, boo, and みんな [1] https://community.cloudflare.com/t/request-cloudflare-registrar-to-support-dev-domain/526235/8 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/request-cloudflare-regist...
russellbeattie 3y ago
I just want to point out that the huge expansion of TLDs has really affected the prices of domains in the aftermarket. This wasn't true immediately, but average users are used to them now, so if your domain ends with .tech or .plus or .cool or whatever, it doesn't have any sort of non-professional stigma it once had. And there are still plenty of good 'ol .com names still available. You can have an AI company with any sort of domain now. No one really cares. I bet much of the .ai surge is due to domain squatters hoping for a windfall. It's not going to happen. I have a one-word, relevant .ai domain that I'm hoping to do something with, but I'd also be open to any sort of offer as I'm short of money right now. So I posted it for sale on various sites and gotten zero interest in it. The days of rare, in-demand domains like sales.com or something are long gone. In fact, most serious companies want a unique name to build a brand. Which is a better long-term name, intelligent.ai or logique.com?
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  I'm glad this happened. Means there's less incentive for domain-squatting.
jedberg 3y ago
A really big looming question is what will happen to all the .tv domains, which provide 95% of Tuvalu's GDP (similar to how .ai is for Anguilla). The island is getting warn away by rougher seas and the ocean level is rising thanks to climate change. What happens when the island no longer exists? Does the country still exist? Should the .tv domain still exist? When Yugoslavia broke up they shut down its TLD, but this would be .... different?
- broodbucket 3y ago
  .su still exists. According to this article I found, Tuvaluans are trying to maintain their statehood and maritime rights once they no longer have land. It's uncharted territory for the UN but it strikes me as pretty likely (plus it's a bad look to not throw a bone to a country that the rest of the world played a part in destroying). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/tuvalu-seeks-to-retain-statehood-if-it-sinks-completely-as-sea-levels-rise https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/tuvalu-seeks-t... My prediction is the TLD stays and revenues go to the entity that is the Tuvaluan government (probably based in Australia at that point)
  - phire 3y ago
    Tuvalu is also working on a land reclamation project that is designed to keep at least some land above the projected storm surges beyond the year 2100.
    - jasomill 3y ago
      They've also amended their constitution in an attempt to maintain statehood even if rising sea levels do overtake the island: https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-its-own-disappearance https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Tuvalu#The_climate_crisis_and_recognition_of_Tuvalu’s_statehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Tuvalu#The_cli...
- reactordev 3y ago
  I’m sure since it would no longer be a country TLD, you could easily say it’s a media TLD. Crisis averted. However, registrar responsibilities would be elsewhere. Google perhaps. Or maybe someone else. I’m sure that .tv is so ubiquitous that it falls under several categories.
apapapa 3y ago
I want .a .... No I
nevi-me 3y ago
It's great that they're repaying gov debts. If the revenue levels ever decrease, the people will be better off. Vince Cate sounds decent, ethical and honourable. Other people would be ripping the government off.
- rexreed 3y ago
  Vince has quite the unique and colorful background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate
rexreed 3y ago
Vince Cate, the domain manager referenced in the article, has a unique and rich history of his own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate
one_buggy_boi 3y ago
Beyond the risk associated with using a ccTLD, I've noticed that several Fortune 100 companies are now outright blocking .ai domains because they host content believed to potentially leak intellectual property, especially within the financial services industry. This is something to consider if you're launching a new product targeting such customers and want to avoid having architects/engineers go through the hassle of requesting that your site be added to an allowlist.
- berkes 3y ago
  It sounds plausible, but also extremely naive. Is there any substance to this, or is it just a rumor?
vintagedave 3y ago
There seems to be significant domain squatting on .ai. I looked for a simple, non-obviously-AI-related word as a .ai domain a week ago, which was registered but listed as for sale, and the domain registrar suggested it was worth $4M. That's more than the yearly sales Anguilla makes in total. Many words and phrases I've looked for in the space are registered but listed as for sale. I suspect this means new sales will slow for Anguilla, and I wonder if as time passes and value drops, renewals will slow too.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
I had .im, .io domains et cetera. Seeing some crazy price increases I moved those to .net and .com. It’s not guaranteed but I believe it’s less likely that a generic domain will go bonkers in terms of cost overnight.
robbiejs 3y ago
There is also the .je domain name, I think for Jersey Islands. "je" can be appended to most Dutch words making it "smaller". For example Hond (dog) Hondje (small dog) I own the domain name https://site.je https://site.je. I wanted to put a cms on it. It's up for sale btw :-)
- arthurcolle 3y ago
  this site just doesn't do it for me. and for that reason, I'm out
- jesprenj 3y ago
  "Je" in slovene also translates to "is" in English. Since adverbs are written before verbs in slovene, it's a nice hack to use http://okusno.je http://okusno.je (a recipe website), which translates to "[It] is tasty".
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > "je" can be appended to most Dutch words making it "smaller". Equally true in English, though it's spelled variously -ie or -y. Dog (hond) doggie (hondje)
jesprenj 3y ago
It's interesting that the AI TLD has an A record and an HTTP server directly on the TLD: http://ai http://ai This practice is forbidden on gTLDs, but no such rule exists for ccTLDs.
alentred 3y ago
Can't help but notice the minimalism of the DataHaven.net web site [0] (the company that handles the sales). Obviously they don't need it as a storefront, and yet it contrasts so much with how modern business operate. Just recently there was an "Ask HN" about it [1] ("Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?"). [0] http://datahaven.net/ http://datahaven.net/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154380
isolli 3y ago
In a similar vein, Tuvalu finally joined the UN in 2000 after monetizing the .tv domain in 1998. It could not afford the membership previously. Island sells web address to buy UN membership [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/business.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/business....
- freetonik 3y ago
  Huh, it's strange that UN membership costs money.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    How else would they fund it?
  - toyg 3y ago
    The UN has a number of programs which cost money; even just the maintenance of the building and staff costs money. There is a formula they use to "harmonize" contributions by population, gdp etc. From the documents, it looks like Tuvalu contributes $ 2,500 p/y to the Working Capital Fund (i.e. reserves) and about $ 40,000 p/y to the regular budget (which is periodically modified and approved depending on needs of the various programs, and collected yearly from member countries, with unspent leftovers returned to them). If these look like paltry sums, it's because they are. No wonder the Gates Foundation is squarely in the top-20 UN donors. For comparison, some of the biggest contributors are the US (55m to Working Capital Fund, 750m to yearly budget), China (38m and 500m) and Japan (20m and 220m), although the highest per-capita contributions amoung sizeable countries are Norway and Sweden.
piersj225 3y ago
The Map Men did a video on the history of internet country codes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4hxKkqR4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4hxKkqR4E
anonzzzies 3y ago
I wish some of these owners would use some of that money to prevent squatting. It's a plague; I was looking for some .ai domain last weekend and everything is squatted and for sale for stupid money.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

311 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

This is a great article. It's an interesting phenomenon. How did the `.tv` boom work out? Anyone know registration rates for that domain over time? We are in a big wave of AI hype so the registrations are going to be many for now... """ And it’s just part of the general budget—the government can use it however they want. But I’ve noticed that they’ve paid down some of their debt, which is pretty unusual. They’ve eliminated property taxes on residential buildings. So we’re doing well, I would say. """

madsbuch 3y ago
A shame they don't manage that inflow of money particularly well. Instead of giving tax cuts they should treat it like Norway treats income from oil and make a sovereign wealth fund – oh well...
- dpflan 3y ago
  Right, "remove taxes because of domain sales!"...not a good long-term strategy
  - p4bl0 3y ago
    Yes, and since it's property taxes it also means that this money is redistributed to people already wealthy enough to own their house or apartment (and most probably those that others rent)…
- gwern 3y ago
  When you're a small incompetent corrupt country, a sovereign wealth fund is the last thing you want. Like dumping gasoline on a fire. Whereas cutting taxes - well, it may not be optimal, but it's harder to corrupt, is transparent and publicly observable, and easy to implement.
  - dpflan 3y ago
    Not following the phrasing: "Whereas cutting taxes - well, it may not be optimal, but it's harder to corrupt, is transparent and publicly observable, and easy to implement." Cutting taxes is harder to corrupt? The removal of taxes is good because the country can't properly collect taxes in the first place?
    - gwern 3y ago
      Indeed. "Please pay us 100 rubles for house tax." "But house tax was abolished last year thanks to the AI revenues!" "Er..." > The removal of taxes is good because the country can't properly collect taxes in the first place? Sure. Look at Russia's infamous 'tax audits'. ("For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.") And then deadweight losses, overhead from dodging it, stuff being driven in to blackmarkets, manipulation of tax regs (the more complicated the better) to subsidize connected oligarchs... The more nominally powerful but incompetent a government is, the worse.
  - madsbuch 3y ago
    This is a surprisingly good argument that me as a Danish person in a well functioning society with almost no corruption forgets. However, one could hope for a bit more ambition on these matters :)
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  Why would people tax themselves when they don’t need to?
  - madsbuch 3y ago
    I can recommend you to look into the Norwegian case and study general economics. There is a hole repository of knowledge you'd need in order to understand why taxation is important.
notzane 3y ago
120k registrations * $30 = $3.6 million last year (minus fees). At the peak (July 2020) they did 140k in a single month. https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tld/tv-TLD_ID-1435 https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tld/tv-TLD_ID-1435

stuartd 3y ago

My cue to mention http://ai http://ai which used to link to the registrar

judge2020 3y ago
http://ai./ http://ai./ still works and links to registrar services
- stuartd 3y ago
  http://ai http://ai works on a desktop browser and opens the same page - this is the page it used to open - https://web.archive.org/web/20220316164406/http://ai/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220316164406/http://ai/
  - judge2020 3y ago
    Not for me, this might be a quirk with Chrome on AT&T using the router's DNS. It does a dns lookup for ai.attlocal.net to find it on the network, instead of appending the trailing dot like it should.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tomduncalf 3y ago
How does this work? Are there other domains like this? I've never seen it before!
- steve_rambo 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Dotless_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Dotless_domai...
- rzzzt 3y ago
  I'm fairly certain "www.canon" resolved to Canon's website at some point (where "some point" is the introduction of domain, 2015), and was not just a hypothetical address: - https://icannwiki.org/.canon https://icannwiki.org/.canon - https://domainnamewire.com/2010/03/17/canon-why-would-you-want-brand/ https://domainnamewire.com/2010/03/17/canon-why-would-you-wa...

rvnx 3y ago

Fun to understand that the reliability of your billion dollar business depends on the decisions of people in Anguilla to hire the right people (like the .to domain)

p4bl0 3y ago

> It’s about US $3 million per month. We do the domains for two years, and so all of our money now is new domains. And if we just stay at this level of $3 million per month for new domains, when the renewals kick in a year from now, we’ll just jump to $6 million per month. Is it actually reasonable to expect a steady $3M of domain creation over such a long period of time? AI is really trendy right now so a lot of projects are sparkling up, and even more ideas of projects… and people buy domain names for all of these, even those they won't ever actually start to build. I would bet many of these domains won't even be renewed, and I would guess that the number of newly created domains won't actually keep up for long.

yieldcrv 3y ago
tough to say but lots of trends didn't go away they just died down .io never went away for tech you'd think the mobile app development bubble would have popped 10 years ago but it just kept going despite not really delivering value to most people that feel that they need one 2020's .finance is still popping in the crypto space, notably many, maybe even most of those ideas do make revenue for the creator, in comparison to a random registration on a whim that sits in stasis forever I can see the same for .ai domains
- whatyesaid 3y ago
  .io is simply the new .net, what you get when you can't get .com but don't want to rename. Although .io and .ai are really expensive so I wouldn't be surprised if something new comes up.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    in my world that was true 10 years ago, except it wasnt a cop out: nobody needed .coms but nobody knew it yet because of prevailing wisdom over here .xyz is the new .io and nobody cares about the tld that much at all if you’re relying on users to type in your domain name, or SEO, or some form of legitimacy with an equally as antiquated crowd, you’ve already failed and need to scrap the idea

sarimkhalid 3y ago

Funny...reminds me of how the Island State of Tuvalu really benefited from the .tv domain.

stalfosknight 3y ago

A windfallf.

39 3y ago
Don’t know why you’re being flagged, the way this site editorializes, you’d think they’d correct a typo.
Gys 3y ago
A windfall for a leeward (wind) island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeward_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeward_Islands

ado__dev 3y ago

I wish they didn't require a minimum of 2 years for domain registrations.

account42 3y ago
I wish all domain registrations had a minimum of at least ten years. We should encourage URLs that stay around and discourage speculators and other squatters.
gwern 3y ago
The reason you wish they didn't require a 2-year prepayment is the same reason they probably want to impose that requirement.

jakub_g 3y ago

$3M per month, 15k residents, so roughly $200 per resident per month. Not bad.

giarc 3y ago
"They’ve eliminated property taxes on residential buildings." What a great thing for the country.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  > What a great thing for the country. Not necessarily. The risk with any kind of external subsidy is that it may not last forever. Imagine if that happened wherever you live. Once everyone's accustomed to $0 in property tax, what would happen if you suddenly had to put those taxes back in place? Would it stall the economy if the tax burden was high enough? IMHO, the best way to deal with windfall money like that is to put it into a wealth fund or use it to build infrastructure. That way you don't become dependent on it and, if the money stops flowing after a while, you at least have some long term infrastructure to show for it.
  - berkes 3y ago
    As per the article, the first thing they did was not the elimination of the tax, but paying off debts. Which is lasting. Arguably more so than a trust fund.

mholt 3y ago

I've said it before [0-4], I'll say it again -- mind your TLD. They have about as much control and influence over your traffic as a VPN, except even your users are at their mercy. Do not choose a TLD based on trends. [0]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1686148772831846402 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1686148772831846402 "TLDs are almost as bad as VPNs in terms of the magnitude of trust you need to commit to another entity for your online survival. Always do thorough research before choosing a TLD." [1]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1613228573015568386 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1613228573015568386 "TLD registries set their own prices. PS: .io is operated by Indian Ocean Territory. Then, "In 2017, a researcher managed to take control of four of the seven authoritative name servers for the .io domain."" [2]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1688603657716248576 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1688603657716248576 "Every company I consult with, I advise them to choose TLDs like you would email providers, web hosts, VPNs, and ISPs! They carry heavy risks." [3]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/900740252498665472 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/900740252498665472 "(Note the 1500% increase in price for the .hosting TLD.)" [4]: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1598092186024755200 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1598092186024755200 "Many TLDs are unregulated and put your business at risk"

whalesalad 3y ago
Basing your entire business on a ccTLD is very risky. All it takes is a coup and boom you’re toast.
- arlcode 3y ago
  It may be a good choice if it is your local ccTLD, your country is fairly stable and your customers are fine with it. For example .de is the perfect choice if you are a German company servicing primarily the German market.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Most businesses own their brand name under at least a few TLD's. It's fairly easy to shift customers over from yourbrand.com to yourbrand.org. And you'd be smart to have your mobile app fall back to a backup domain if your main domain is uncontactable.

whycome 3y ago

Tuvalu (.tv), Libya (.ly), Anguilla (.ai). Matt of wordpress got ma.tt (Trinidad & Tobago). Some countries (eg, Canada) require some kind of residency. What other TLDs are special?

jszymborski 3y ago
.io quite infamously https://www.thewebmaster.com/archived/io-tld-top-level-domain/ https://www.thewebmaster.com/archived/io-tld-top-level-domai...
- whycome 3y ago
  I legit didn't realize that .io was a TLD for a country/state. Also, that article is wild! In the future, we'll have a coup in some country and it will cause web chaos just from the TLD issue. (I've seen first-hand how some countries handle their ccTLDs...)
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    > I legit didn't realize that .io was a TLD for a country/state. All two-letter TLDs are. Now that you know the pattern, you'll be able to identify all the other ccTLDs as well.
    - dataflow 3y ago
      For some definition of country/state that includes .eu and such...
      - wongarsu 3y ago
        Yeah, Country Code TLDs is a bit of a misnomer, it's more "regions and territories". Lots of islands, lots of of countries with spotty international recognition, a couple countries that no longer exist (like the Soviet Union), and a couple "regions" (EU, Antarctic)
  - progbits 3y ago

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Everyone should have learned from .io that this is risky. Thought after the fallout from that there seemed to be a trend away from those ccTLDs and back to traditional ones and then of course the big release of so many new ones that gave lots of options, the ccTLDs as 'trendy' shouldn't be a thing anymore.

donmcronald 3y ago
I'm always surprised when I see people building businesses on any of the ccTLDs. The only one I would use is .ca, but that's because I'm from Canada. There are no guarantees with ccTLDs and any problems that come up might be exacerbated by language and cultural barriers. Regardless, I have the .co, .me, and .io that match my best .com domain even though I'll never use them. I'd do the same for .ai, but it's too expensive. Even the new gTLDs are iffy depending on your risk tolerance. In my opinion, the only truly "safe" domains since ICANN removed most price controls [1] are .com and .net. Also, many of the new gTLD registries are owned by Ethos Capital via Identity Digital [2] (Donuts + Afilias). > In January 2021, Ethos Capital acquired Donuts after their failed bid to gain control over the .org internet domain. [3] Similar to ccTLDs, I'd only register domains on many of the new gTLDs for brand protection and wouldn't use them or rely on them. I wouldn't say to never use those TLDs, but I would use a strategy that only relies on them for shortening URLs and redirecting traffic to top tier TLDs. For example: somecompany.balloons --> somecompanyballoons.com And never let a non-premium new gTLD registration lapse if there's a chance you want to use it. AFAIK, domains can't be reclassified as premium while they're registered, but they can, and do, get reclassified after expiration. 1. https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-all-price-caps-on-org-domain-names/ https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Digital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Digital 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(company)
account42 3y ago
I'd pick a ccTLD of a stable country over a nuTLD any day.

sammyteee 3y ago

I miss .tk :'(

blueyes 3y ago

typo in headline "windfallf" @dang

dang 3y ago
fixedf. thanks!
- Razengan 3y ago
  Dang, why was "The Best Headset Yet" removed from the title of this Apple Vision Pro review post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190468 but "Magic, until it's not" is left standing in this post's title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190506
  - dang 3y ago
    I'm afraid it was probably just random.

rob 3y ago

Domain registration used to be free until like 1995 or so. Crazy what it has become.

foxmoss 3y ago

It's odd ICANN has such a control to effect an countries income just by choosing a good abbreviation. I doubt the creators of the DNS system had any idea that domains would arbitrarily give some countries an extra form of income, profiting from people who could care less about the country it was created for. Why didn't ICANN just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?

Spray3610 3y ago
ICANN does not pick the abbreviations. ISO does.
- srhngpr 3y ago
  ISO3166-1 alpha-2 to be exact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  It's odd ISO has such a control to effect an countries income just by choosing a good abbreviation. I doubt the creators of the DNS system had any idea that domains would arbitrarily give some countries an extra form of income, profiting from people who could care less about the country it was created for. Why didn't ISO just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?
  - dharmab 3y ago
    ISO created the country codes in 1974, prior to the invention of DNS.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Haha, this is both informative and deadpan. Thanks. :)
      - reactordev 3y ago

vavooom 3y ago

I am personally a fan of using the .dev TLD. Any alternatives/ issues with it I should be aware of?

mroche 3y ago
I have a .com and .dev myself. I used to have a .io as well, but I made the decision to avoid ccTLDs. The only issues I've seen from .dev is: - It's owned by Google (opinions differ). Google owns a lot more TLDs than I thought...[0]. - Like .app, it requires TLS for web hosting (good for production, annoying for local work). - Not all services that host DNS support it. For example, Cloudflare's registrar[1] didn't support .dev until August '23. I don't believe the deprecation of Google Domains has any impact on the Google Registry side of things, but I could be wrong. I transferred my domain out of GD once my preferred registrar supported it. [0] https://www.registry.google/ https://www.registry.google/ TLDs: meme, ing, app, day, new, soy, dev, dad, foo, mov, nexus, how, esq, rsvp, page, phd, prof, zip, boo, and みんな [1] https://community.cloudflare.com/t/request-cloudflare-registrar-to-support-dev-domain/526235/8 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/request-cloudflare-regist...

russellbeattie 3y ago

I just want to point out that the huge expansion of TLDs has really affected the prices of domains in the aftermarket. This wasn't true immediately, but average users are used to them now, so if your domain ends with .tech or .plus or .cool or whatever, it doesn't have any sort of non-professional stigma it once had. And there are still plenty of good 'ol .com names still available. You can have an AI company with any sort of domain now. No one really cares. I bet much of the .ai surge is due to domain squatters hoping for a windfall. It's not going to happen. I have a one-word, relevant .ai domain that I'm hoping to do something with, but I'd also be open to any sort of offer as I'm short of money right now. So I posted it for sale on various sites and gotten zero interest in it. The days of rare, in-demand domains like sales.com or something are long gone. In fact, most serious companies want a unique name to build a brand. Which is a better long-term name, intelligent.ai or logique.com?

BeFlatXIII 3y ago
I'm glad this happened. Means there's less incentive for domain-squatting.

jedberg 3y ago

A really big looming question is what will happen to all the .tv domains, which provide 95% of Tuvalu's GDP (similar to how .ai is for Anguilla). The island is getting warn away by rougher seas and the ocean level is rising thanks to climate change. What happens when the island no longer exists? Does the country still exist? Should the .tv domain still exist? When Yugoslavia broke up they shut down its TLD, but this would be .... different?

broodbucket 3y ago
.su still exists. According to this article I found, Tuvaluans are trying to maintain their statehood and maritime rights once they no longer have land. It's uncharted territory for the UN but it strikes me as pretty likely (plus it's a bad look to not throw a bone to a country that the rest of the world played a part in destroying). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/tuvalu-seeks-to-retain-statehood-if-it-sinks-completely-as-sea-levels-rise https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/tuvalu-seeks-t... My prediction is the TLD stays and revenues go to the entity that is the Tuvaluan government (probably based in Australia at that point)
- phire 3y ago
  Tuvalu is also working on a land reclamation project that is designed to keep at least some land above the projected storm surges beyond the year 2100.
  - jasomill 3y ago
    They've also amended their constitution in an attempt to maintain statehood even if rising sea levels do overtake the island: https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-its-own-disappearance https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Tuvalu#The_climate_crisis_and_recognition_of_Tuvalu’s_statehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Tuvalu#The_cli...
reactordev 3y ago
I’m sure since it would no longer be a country TLD, you could easily say it’s a media TLD. Crisis averted. However, registrar responsibilities would be elsewhere. Google perhaps. Or maybe someone else. I’m sure that .tv is so ubiquitous that it falls under several categories.

apapapa 3y ago

I want .a .... No I

nevi-me 3y ago

It's great that they're repaying gov debts. If the revenue levels ever decrease, the people will be better off. Vince Cate sounds decent, ethical and honourable. Other people would be ripping the government off.

rexreed 3y ago
Vince has quite the unique and colorful background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate

rexreed 3y ago

Vince Cate, the domain manager referenced in the article, has a unique and rich history of his own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cate

one_buggy_boi 3y ago

Beyond the risk associated with using a ccTLD, I've noticed that several Fortune 100 companies are now outright blocking .ai domains because they host content believed to potentially leak intellectual property, especially within the financial services industry. This is something to consider if you're launching a new product targeting such customers and want to avoid having architects/engineers go through the hassle of requesting that your site be added to an allowlist.

berkes 3y ago
It sounds plausible, but also extremely naive. Is there any substance to this, or is it just a rumor?

vintagedave 3y ago

There seems to be significant domain squatting on .ai. I looked for a simple, non-obviously-AI-related word as a .ai domain a week ago, which was registered but listed as for sale, and the domain registrar suggested it was worth $4M. That's more than the yearly sales Anguilla makes in total. Many words and phrases I've looked for in the space are registered but listed as for sale. I suspect this means new sales will slow for Anguilla, and I wonder if as time passes and value drops, renewals will slow too.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

I had .im, .io domains et cetera. Seeing some crazy price increases I moved those to .net and .com. It’s not guaranteed but I believe it’s less likely that a generic domain will go bonkers in terms of cost overnight.

robbiejs 3y ago

There is also the .je domain name, I think for Jersey Islands. "je" can be appended to most Dutch words making it "smaller". For example Hond (dog) Hondje (small dog) I own the domain name https://site.je https://site.je. I wanted to put a cms on it. It's up for sale btw :-)

arthurcolle 3y ago
this site just doesn't do it for me. and for that reason, I'm out
jesprenj 3y ago
"Je" in slovene also translates to "is" in English. Since adverbs are written before verbs in slovene, it's a nice hack to use http://okusno.je http://okusno.je (a recipe website), which translates to "[It] is tasty".
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> "je" can be appended to most Dutch words making it "smaller". Equally true in English, though it's spelled variously -ie or -y. Dog (hond) doggie (hondje)

jesprenj 3y ago

It's interesting that the AI TLD has an A record and an HTTP server directly on the TLD: http://ai http://ai This practice is forbidden on gTLDs, but no such rule exists for ccTLDs.

alentred 3y ago

Can't help but notice the minimalism of the DataHaven.net web site [0] (the company that handles the sales). Obviously they don't need it as a storefront, and yet it contrasts so much with how modern business operate. Just recently there was an "Ask HN" about it [1] ("Ask HN: What happened to startups, why is everything so polished?"). [0] http://datahaven.net/ http://datahaven.net/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154380

isolli 3y ago

In a similar vein, Tuvalu finally joined the UN in 2000 after monetizing the .tv domain in 1998. It could not afford the membership previously. Island sells web address to buy UN membership [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/business.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/business....

freetonik 3y ago
Huh, it's strange that UN membership costs money.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  How else would they fund it?
- toyg 3y ago
  The UN has a number of programs which cost money; even just the maintenance of the building and staff costs money. There is a formula they use to "harmonize" contributions by population, gdp etc. From the documents, it looks like Tuvalu contributes $ 2,500 p/y to the Working Capital Fund (i.e. reserves) and about $ 40,000 p/y to the regular budget (which is periodically modified and approved depending on needs of the various programs, and collected yearly from member countries, with unspent leftovers returned to them). If these look like paltry sums, it's because they are. No wonder the Gates Foundation is squarely in the top-20 UN donors. For comparison, some of the biggest contributors are the US (55m to Working Capital Fund, 750m to yearly budget), China (38m and 500m) and Japan (20m and 220m), although the highest per-capita contributions amoung sizeable countries are Norway and Sweden.

piersj225 3y ago

The Map Men did a video on the history of internet country codes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4hxKkqR4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD4hxKkqR4E

anonzzzies 3y ago

I wish some of these owners would use some of that money to prevent squatting. It's a plague; I was looking for some .ai domain last weekend and everything is squatted and for sale for stupid money.

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