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Is Domain Speculation Bust?
The latest Netcraft survey is more interesting than usual, because it reports a drop in the total number of registered domain names, as well as a decreasing number of sites reachable overall by the survey. It's been a traumatic year in the tech world, but the drop in domain names goes back to domain name buy-ups of 1999 (and looks like it will accelerate the same way domain speculation did in 2000). All is not gloom, though, and the number of registered domain names is not the same as the number of active sites. The Netcraft site points out that "as domains bought for speculative reasons are abandoned, we can expect a higher proportion of sites to be active." Read the rest of the survey report for more interesting information on the state of the domain world.
Example: http://www.melbournecup.com/ The melbourne cup carnival
.au land. When a company is registered, it automatically has rights to its .com.au name over anyone else. It ensures the registered business can have their online presence without having to negotiate around people already there and wanting $$$ for what you already essentially own... (doesn't apply to .orgs and .nets tho)
about a year and a half ago this was a dodgy website for "Melbourne Cups"...
I think domain speculation is going to be with us for quite awhile, but to be honest it really irks me. I hate the whole concept of sitting on something that you know someone else will have to buy off you.
in
Trademarks are a lot easier to enforce as I understand it, than company trading names...
-- Dan =)
There will always be money in p0rn. Don't say that all dot.coms are bust.
IMO, this is further indication that the internet is maturing as a communications medium. Until last year, the net was fairly new and its nature and content evolved every month. I think we are finally beginning to realize what we are going to do with it.
For starters, the days of the ideological, free internet are sadly over. Almost everyone experimented with the free model of the internet and a large proportion of those people failed in their efforts. We have now labelled every commodity with a price, something that will help this medium further.
Then there are the signs that the infant internet is dying. The millions of badly-designed, rearely-updated pages are perishing, and a more well-woven web is taking over. The initial hysteria is gone, most people have already tried their hands at bulilding webpages and have given up due to their lack of talent and/or initiative.
Thus I, for one, am happy at these new state of affairs. I'm not a big fan of paying for content, but that doesnt matter since there are ways of getting around it. I like the better content, the smoother usability and the more complex apps that are emerging today.
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
I work for a Big Media Company, and when the .tv domain became available for people in the US to buy, we were asked "Shouldn't we hurry and register Big Media Company.TV before someone else gets it?"
Fortunately, cool heads prevailed. We reasoned, a year ago, that the battle was over and .com won. And if anyone dared to put up a site BigMediaCompany.tv that infringed on our trademark in well accepted legal ways, we'd just sue them.
Nobody has ever dared use our "BigMediaCompany.tv" and we saved the $50K that the .tv folks wanted.
Basically, the .tv people were blackmailing the Fortune 500.
Note for the dense: our company name isn't really BigMediaCompany
What is disturbing is that as the names expire, the registrars (register.com) do not put the name back in the pool of available names. Rather, they sit on it and force people to pay up to $200.00 to register it. This goes against fairness and this practice must stop. The only way to stop them is to sue them. It seems that the only theing they understand is a court order. Perhaps there is a smart lawyer out there who can make a class action lawsuit to force the registrars relinquish the names they are squatting on and force them to pay the resitration fees rather than getting a free ride on holding the names and extorting people to register it.
Thats nothing.. The sale of Webhosting.com to SBC adds another 2 digits to that amount (178 Mil CDN).
0 80 ,00.html?tag=132&sb=142
:)
http://www.canadacomputes.com/v3/story/1,1017,3
Yes, they picked up a few clients and a few employees with the purchasse but it's still got to count for something
Rod Taylor
A big reason that there just aren't many domain names available any more is is Network Solutions, when a domain that they serve as registrar for expires, Network Solutions hold it for themselves. Rumor is that they were going to auction off all of their illegally collected domains at one point, but that still hasn't happened. Network Solutions is currently squatting on several domains of mine that I had let expire.