4 ms·

The people that own most of these tlds will then sell domains on to ordinary people. So give it time and you, too, can have a .fail domain.

• twelvechairs 14y ago
  Possibly. But say I'm starting a video-sharing website - I'm at a big competitive disadvantage when my customers need to type and remember an extra domain-name level compared to my competitors (who own '.video', '.movie', '.youtube', etc. while i might own '.bobsvideo.fail').
  • AndrewDucker 14y ago
    Except that, as discussed above, "youtube" by itself is not a valid host name. It would have to be "mysite.youtube" Still easier than you having "mysite.bobsvideo.fail" I agree, but frankly most people don't even find sites via the domain name. They'll google "Bobs Video" and see what comes up.
    • zokier 14y ago
      why wouldn't "youtube" be valid hostname?
      • AndrewDucker 14y ago
        Same reason that "com" and "net" aren't. Root nodes aren't, from my understanding, valid names for machines. Edit: Seems I'm wrong. See discussion downthread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105707 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105707
    • TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
      Wrong. "youtube." (or "youtube") IS a valid host name. "to." is an example, it was a URL shortening service, but it's down now.