Slashdot Mirror
The Google Effect And Domain Name Speculation
A reader writes "Google brought us the age of high quality searches, and with that may come the end of domain-name speculation. Good thing we paid for all those laws to punish cyber-squatters. Read the article and learn more."
Never underestimate the appeal of a nice email-address. You don't want to print a google search url onto your business card, do you?
I mean, "the Google effect"?
I think the most likely cause of the shrinking market for domain names is simply the internet bubble bursting - it's been clearly shown that such trivialities as domain names (among other things internet-related) are of dubious real value.
And as for Google searching, while I'm happily using it as my primary search engine, it's by no means perfect, and the author claiming that Google is an example of "search tools that unerringly bring you to the page you want" is total nonsense. I suppose your odds might be better than typing in a domain name blindly, but I'm not so sure.
If I'm looking for a company, I always try the domain name directly *first*, and only after (and if) that fails do I use Google. Seems to work most of the time.
I have a feeling awesomesearchenginefortheinternet.com wouldn't do very well, know matter how good the underlying technology.
At some point maybe you could just do away with domain names themselves... As long as you can get to the search engine, you just pull up raw IP links. It would sure make the Internet safer without all those DNS vulnerabilities.
The point that he either neglected to mention or totally missed was the freedom of speech. Some people just prefer to use it as free speech, which is perfectly acceptable.
Either way, it's a good article, and judging by the increasing prominence of "Register yourname.com!" advertisements everywhere I go, he's right. People are registering less, and the companies are getting worried that they won't get as much money.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
Google is a wonderful tool, but there are times and situations were it fails. Its at its very best at [say] finding every article ever written on a line like 'ORA12345 Oracle', as there is only one possible meaning. It is weaker however when one wants to buy something, because often people have only partialy defined needs for what they want to buy before they engage in the buying process.
A search of 'Bicycle shop UK' will produce many hits, almost all of them not online bicycle retailers. which is why bikes.co.uk will always have worth.
Now my own view is that all retail should be stuck on a separtate domain [.shop par example], and the rest returned to the 'good ol' days', but it aint going to happen
If nothing else, you'd have to update the silly ad every month depending on how google indexed you this time around...
...there are laws passed to prevent people from "tweaking" search engine results so their page comes up with or even before one of the "big guys." I mean, what if more people link to a Ford sucks page than Ford?
...but it will be slowed down considerably. There will always be a market for domain names that are nouns. Some people just don't know any better than to put what they're looking for in their address bar. I am continually amazed by the number of ordinary (read: AOL) net users who haven't heard of Google yet. Every time I find one, I change their home page.
I hope this convinces some people that competition beats regulation, at least most of the time.
I wouldn't say Google is part of fixing the problem; search engines before Google could have just done the same. But now that Google is pretty much the only search engine in town, and that people tend to stick to whatever their default portal advertizes to them, the trend in the article is only natural, and really shouldn't be associated with Google directly.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Seeking Search Engine Perfection
Well worth a read.
For commercial sites, I think site naming is still important and it's a matter of branding. Google may take away one's attention to naming at first, but once you find a site you want to re-visit, naming is still important.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Clearly the author is viewing things through Google Goggles.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
I say good riddance. I'll keep an eye out now for the few domains that I was interested in back then. But I still wont pay a squatter. Not one cent. If I dont use google to search for my desired name once in awhile, maybe I'll try the Verisign Waiting List Service also discussed quite recently, so long as I can get my money back if I get tired of waiting.
In general, I think this is a good thing. It seems that demand for and profitability of the service that lives on the domain name is just as important as the domain itself. What a surprise.
Actually, if I know what page I'm looking for (ie, I've been there), Google is 98% successful with my searches. The Via Technologies example is a very good one. There are lots of other (mostly asian technology ;) companies that don't have the benifit of www.theirname.com domains, and Google will get me the right page on "theirname homepage" almost every time.
/what/ you're looking for (ie, you know what you want, but not where it is), obviously, Google is not going to be as effective in this case, since you probably don't know a unique set of words appearing on the page on which you'll eventually find what you want (or maybe it doesn't exist!)
/I/ need, although I realize there are some other kick ass search engines out there too.
Obviously, if you don't know
Also, I think the "google" effect is more of a Kleenex thing (where a brand name becomes a common slang for the generalized technology) than it is credit, although I also use opera and have configured it such that I only have the google search box on my toolbar. Google's all
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is interesting, and very true. For a long time, I have just used Google to search for a web page instead of trying to make a guess. Often, the closest guess are wrong. Even some less experienced computer users, like my parents, use a search engine, and almost never type in an address.
That's nice and all, but what happens when Google (and the other 1 or 2 decent search engines that will exist) stop being free?
It seems to me that the current trend in internet marketing is to offer a great product free of charge for a few months, then slowly tighten the screws. Take a look at Hotmail, for example. A few months ago they started pushing their Pay Upgrade more and more. Then they started slicing off quota space (down to 2.5 now) and lowering the window for you to login before they kill your account. In fact just today I got an email from them informing me that I must now login once every 30 days or my account will lose all emails and contact lists.
Unless I opt for the $19.95 Paid Upgrade of course...
------
Today's Top Deals
Google is one of the greatest tools on the internet. I use it all the time to look for work on my thesis, commercial sites, phone books, order flowers, buy laptops, books, etc.
But to say that Google is the reason whu you don't give so much importance to domain names is a bit too strong. I think the mature age of the www and the bad shape economy are greater factors of the less importante domain name factor. You don't see so many fight around domain names because people have major concerns about other survival things.
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
Something I've been talking about for years is the concept of a "subject based directory." Pretty much all the web search engines work based on the content of a page, not the more abstract subject matter of the page. Some of the directories Google, Yahoo) get close to a good subject-based lookup, but they're not quite what I (think) I've been looking for.
What I'd like would be to go to a search engine, type in "ford," and get a list of websites, with a brief description of each. Not pages on a website, but a list of things like "Ford Automotive," "Ford Aerospace" (are they even still around?), "John Ford", "Ford's Theatre," etc. Maybe in decreasing order by some kind of popularity rating.
Or are the directories now pretty good at this kind of lookup? Google Directory did a passable job with "ford," but it's not well organized and still (apparently) takes its description information straight from the web page, rather than from a carefully crafted, entered-directly-into-the-directory abstract of the site. The "Realnames" service looks like it might have been a solution, but I think it's just moved the problem from a for-pay DNS issue to a for-pay keyword issue. (use "ford" there, and you get FordVehicles.com, no other choices).
This'd be easy enough to implement with some kind of meta tag, in which someone could place the legal and common name for their organization, or for the specific information on their site, along with a one-paragraph description. Search engines could then let people search against that "abstract" database.
Does this make sense? Is anyone doing anything like this (and I've just missed out, being under a rock)? Or are there big feasibility problems (like people stacking meta data) that I haven't addressed?
It appears that a whole lot of domain names were gobbled up in 1999 and 2000, with the result that many of these registrations will be expiring this year. One can hope that many of these domain names will become available to people who actually plan on using them. As good as Google may be, there are still a lot of reasons for wanting an easy-to-remember domain name for your company or product.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
What I do believe is that adding additional TLDs, for the most part, will not help free up names. Currently companies will typically purcase theircompany.com, theircompany.net, and some even go as far as getting theircompany.org. If you start adding additional TLDs all it means is that companies will start buying theircomany.TLD, where TLD is the new TLD that is available to them.
This won't increase available names... it'll increase revenues to registrars that end up selling the same domain name in more TLDs, costing companies and other domain name owners more money.
No matter which way this comes out, the professional namers will get new business. (These are the people who come up with names for vehicles such as Isuzu Axiom and new corporate identities like Verizon.)
Memorable domain names and searchable business names both need these characteristics:
- Short, or few elements
- Unique
- Memorable in itself, and,
-- easy to associate with your product
-- and just your product, not everybody's
- Pronounceable on sight and spellable from memory
- Without ribald connotations in major languages
An excellent example: Slashdot.
Ordinary business people are no better at making up names than they are at drawing their own logos. If you can do it for them, you've got a niche.
whois 'google*' lists 50 records, including GOOGLE.COM, GOOGLE.NET, GOOGLE.ORG, GOOGLE4SEX.COM, GOOGLEA.COM, GOOGLEBAY.COM, many of which are blatantly for sale.
I have the Google Toolbar and one of the features is the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. This is just like the same button on Google.com. The basic effect is - you type in the name of something you want, hit "I'm Feeling Lucky" and you're instantly taken to the right page (most of the time). As a result, you don't even need to "search", you just "go". The Google Effect is pretty damn effective.
Schnapple
"Meanwhile, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international governance body put together several years ago at the behest of the U.S. government, was set up in part to bring competition into a system that sorely needed it."
If you are at all interested in current ICANN news I highly recommend http://www.icannwatch.org/.
Personal websites for the common user do not need their own domain. They can benefit from Google greatly. However, it is very important for companies to have their own domain so they can both host a website and use email addresses with their own domain.
http://tomgould.com/
As google also bases its search on the domain name ...
I think it's a bit difficult to discount the current economy's role in the decrease in spending on random domain names. Google may play a role in this trend, but I'd guess that a lot of squatters have run out of cash to spend on wild speculation.
goats.com: better than
what happens when search engines start mixing paid links with "normal" search results?
...i'd rather type out the url myself, i think.
already many popular sites do this without so much as an indicator to help the searcher. so while google and other search engines ^may^ have taken care of the cybersquatters, it wont be long that marketers of the world run to exploit this usage pattern....
Wasn't this the point of the Real Names system? From their about page:
(darren)
it's been clearly shown that such trivialities as domain names (among other things internet-related) are of dubious real value.
.com unless you are a legitimate business, no generic words, and so on.
Even on the internet, domain names were never important. Think about it, who is the best-known web-based book retailer, bookstore.com or Amazon? The biggest ISP isn't isp.com, it's AOL or MSN. Even Google or Yahoo, not search.com.
I blame NSI et al - they should have been a lot more rigorous with registrations, as the NICs in some other countries are - no registering of
I would like to see domain names publicized as they are, and by IP and by bar code, but for them to also carry other information, such as the company name and description. Then people carry a pen-like or card-like device to grab URLs off of everything (a can of baked beans, back of a cereal box, off a business card, in a newspaper, etc.) to take back to your computer later to load the appropriate page. Nothing proprietary like that CueCat crap. A real standard and simple technology to make addresses easily accessible.
They need to be ubiquitous.
Might the shrinkage in number of websites have something to do with the corporate assimilation of the web?
As anyone who's been here from the start can testify, things have changed substantially since the early days. First there just wasn't much out there, and what there was was pretty random. Then Yahoo and other search/gateway sites began to come along just as the first boom of sites hit, making things a bit more organized and predictable. Soon after this, the corporations began to make their presence known, and then they started to take over.
Now if you want information on a topic you go to a corporate website that specializes in providing that information along with lots of other info, banner adds, pop-up adds, redirects to partner sites, etc. ad nauseum.
Old sites are lapsing because their place has been usurped by profit-driven sites. Times may have been hard for the tech industry lately, but who's going to go offline first: the business paying $1000 per month in hosting fees or the unemployed tech worker who's paying similar fees for his personal domain.
There's also the rise of the umbrella site that hosts a number of smaller sites under a single domain so that Jim's tech page is no longer at www.jimstechpage.net, but is now found under www.acmeweb.com/jimstechpage/.
Not all of this is bad, not all of it is good. The times they are a changin', and if we don't want to be caught unawares, we should keep our eyes open to the way its changing instead of sticking with an utopian vision that went bye-bye 5 years ago.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
The real danger is that Google already wields too much power on the web. Just like so many other companies that own the majority of the market.
All we need is for Google to start charging or dictating so change to us and they will be little different than ICAAN or Microsoft.
Scary.
IMHO, Google has lost its accuracy and its results lack relevance compared to the all-time-favourite Altavista (which I usually access the light way).
I just can't find the equivalent of Altavista's syntax on Google.
Need an example ?
Remember the hint that appeared in italics :
Need a bedtime story ?
Type : +Fairy +princ* -dragon
(note the wildcard use)
There are also lots of short ways to find which pages refer to one another (+link:...) or if you want to filter whichever result after a given url part (+url:...)
But, on the bottom, the guy is right, most people now ask Google first instead of looking for a funky domain name which sounds like what they'd enter in the Google form.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Must work for MS [joke]
OTOH, alot of search engines use as part of their results inputs from places like Open Directory, and others. The results are going to be uniform in many places. the end result is some sort of consolidation of resources.
Yahoo got started by a couple of college kids building the first big bookmark list into something useful. There would be a distinctly different flavor if this had originated in ussr or china or something.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
> although I also use opera and have configured it
:)
> such that I only have the google search box on my
> toolbar.
I have it set up too, but I never use it; it's easier just to type "g foo bar wibble" in a nearby address bar.
You can make IE do this too, btw; HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g, set the default value to http://www.google.com/search?q=%s. Repeat for other search engines.
(Yeah, editing the registry for something like this.. I know.. bleugh
NSI should have rigorously regulating domain registrations? Sorry, not in a capitalist society. This is America. NSI makes much more money letting every freak register any domain they want. No surprise that .orgs are usually not registered to non-profits.
in searching for your own name. If Google returns your own name accurately (as it does mine), then there is little use registering yourname.com because people can find you as easily using Google. This is the telling point in his argument; an example that is not commercialized that underscores his point.
Of course, the search engines aren't the only reason for the drop in registration, but they play a part... and perhaps a very important part.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
oo, thanks for the tip ... and about the registry, good thing I'm not an MS support engineer, or I'd have pointed out that you just voided any rights to a stable OS, buddy! I'd yell, "Hey, we set that minefield up so that you couldn't plod through it, damnit! If everyone could choose to set their search engine shortcuts, this planet would be in total complete chaos right now!" Heehee.
"Old man yells at systemd"
When finding stuff, we basically use one or both of two basic methods: Directories and indices.
DNS is, basically, a directory. So was the original Yahoo. Google is an index.
The difference is, that with a directory, an external categorization is applied to predefined entities (such as websites). With an index, the "categorization" is derived from the content itself.
Of course, deep down below, at the core of "finding stuff"-logic, directories and indices are the same. Google, too, operates with externally defined entities: words and pages.
The ultimate searchengine, one that would REALLY kill the need for DNS in day-to-day surfing, would somehow combine these two notions, and possibly include many more.
For the sufficiently clueless, even trivial applications of common sense are indistinguishable from wisdom
Expect to see more articles along the lines of "Google saved my life/company/favorite pet/etc"
As others have pointed out, after the IPO Google will become a subscription service.
The most interesting from a domain-name point of view is this: With the rise of search tools that unerringly bring you to the page you want, the need for a highly specific domain name -- one that a casual Web user would be able to guess -- has practically disappeared.
.com after most websites, so if you put up toys.com, you'll probably get a lot of hits, no matter what your actual company is. I agree, typing in www.lucenttechnologies.com is a much worse method than going to Google and looking up "Lucent Technologies," but I think people have always preferred search engines for looking up specific companies.
e s.html, it probably wouldn't stick in your mind very long, and you wouldn't just causally browse the site. Now, don't get me wrong, if that was the URL and you REALLY wanted to check out Nike, then you'd go look it up on Google, and you'd get there anyway. The point I'm trying to make is that it's not about the companies trying to guess what domain you'll type in, they're trying to make it easy for you to associate a website to their company, and that's why I think there's still a big demand for specific domain names.
I agree with this article for the most part; Google is a great search engine and it eliminates the need to memorize a bunch of URL's. There's a few assumptions the author is making that aren't exactly correct.
1 - Google doesn't "unerringly bring you the page you want" because no matter what you type into the search field, it can't tell exactly what you're looking for. It gives great results most of the time, but it still stumbles once you move into more vague searches. This isn't Google's fault, it's just the fact of life that neither people or computers are psychic, we can't read each other's minds.
2 - Having a domain name that someone could guess, or that someone might not even know relates to your company, is still pretty desirable. People are familiar with having a
3 - This is probably the most important point: domain names are about advertising in today's internet economy. The companies would like for people to be able to guess their website address, but what's more important to them is that customers can easily remember the address when they see it in advertisements. So, when you see a commercial for Nike Shoes, and they show you www.nikeshoes.com, you will easily remember that for the next time you're browsing the web. Now, it really wouldn't make a difference if it was www.nike.com, www.shoesbynike.com, www.gonike.com, or www.swoosh.com, because the point is they're giving you an easy to remember location. Now, if they gave you www.commercialwebsites.com/shoecompanies/nike/sho
~ now you know
It's a good thing those assumptions have been thrown out the window in favor of link popularity... since astroturfing takes a lot more work. :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
NSI should have rigorously regulating domain registrations? Sorry, not in a capitalist society. This is America. NSI makes much more money letting every freak register any domain they want.
I'd have to disagree with you there. Look at Verisign. They could probably do quite well in the short time just issuing certificates to anyone who wanted one, but that would devalue their products. Their whole business is based around transitive trust, the browser trusts the CA, the CA trusts the merchant, therefore the browser trusts the merchant.
Back in the old days, NSI could charge $70 for a domain registration and people were willing to pay that price, nowadays you can register a domain for $5.
Two things seem apparent to me:
1) Most knowledgeably computer users aren't typing in "http://www.tires.com" to find a place to buy tires
2) Most new Internet users aren't typing in "http://www.google.com" to find what they are looking for
Until the Internet population becomes more educated, there will always be a benefit to domain name speculation.
I doubt anyone that uses Slashdot types in words as a domain name to find what they are looking for (unless they are bored or desparate). On the other hand, Mr. Billy-Bob Joe from the midwest who is using the Internet for the first time doesn't quite know what he is doing, so he will try to do just that, likely.
In other words, Tom's Hardware would have absolutely no benefit to domain spculation, but another company more oriented to older, less experienced Internet users would continue to have success.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Your last name is obviously not Smith, Jones, Wang, Chow, or any number of extremely generic, common names. Plenty of people in this world share their first and last name with hundreds, if not thousands, of people worldwide.
"In general, the more links there are to a particular page from other pages, the higher it ranks in Google's hierarchy on that search term."
Most people have a vague idea of how google works. This paper goes into some detail.
Personaly I have this little "Feature" MS stuck us with.. Wanna turn it off?? Here's how..
Go to Internet Options, Advanved Tab.. Scroll down to Search and check "Do not Search from Address Bar". THen It will try and go where you tell it.. No matter how mangled the URL.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
A Domain Name is the name of a BOX, a piece of hardware, an address. Just because it's more friendly to humans than an IP address, doesn't mean that it's the best way to get a WEB user to the right place. Having companies jump through hoops to 0wn "ibm.com" "ibm.edu" "ibm.org" "ibm.net" "ibmsucks.com" "international_business_machines.com" "international_business_machines.org" etc. ad infinitum makes NO fucking sense at all. Just as it makes no sense for some guy named John to get his "john.com" domain legally removed from his posession, because the international brotherhood of guys looking for prostitutes comes along a year later and decides they want a website.
.org, .com, or .edu. (not that anybody follows those rules anymore).
If I want to find Apple Computer's website, I should have a place on my browser where I can enter text: "Apple Computer" and get www.apple.com. And if I want Apple Records, I type in "Apple Records". If I type in "Apple" it gives me a choice, plus all the Apple advocacy and rumors sites, and both Apple Computer and Apple Records should be satisfied with that.
I, as the Joe Sixpack user of the net shouldn't have to know if the correct address is "www.apple.com" "www.applecomputer.com" or "www.apple_computer.com". Relying on these weird domain name permutations will often get you the WRONG site!
For you and I, the average clueful slashdot user, domain names are a fine way to find where you want to go - but even WE rely on bookmarks, favorites and shortcuts for many of our favorite sites. The typing of actual DNS names should be the resort of the technical though - and my mother should not have to know what an underscore is, or why a site should be a
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The article's author has a good point. I don't try to guess a companies domain anymore either... ever since that embarrassing moment in the lab at school when I found out that Dick's Sporting Goods web site is not Dicks.com.
..duh.
They sure seem to be are all about profit, and not about judicious, regulated management of domains.
You're right; what I mean is that by not regulating, they have put short term profit ahead of building value long term.
This often happens in capitalist systems, but that's because capitalism leaves the decisions up to you. I just happen to think that the corporate strategy of NSI was flawed, for the above reason.
You'll find that the first page of results gives you a pretty good overview of who I am. One page is a project I ran while an undergraduate student; one page is a press release from my undergraduate university talking about me; one page is from an orchestra of which I was a member; one page is from Oxford's computing lab. I don't need to tell people my email address; they can find it very easily through the pages google provides.
All that is good and useful for me, but what of the other people (I know of three so far) who share my name? What if someone wants to contact them?
If we're going to rely upon Google to translate names into URLs, we're inevitably going to run into such problems, where only the most famous person/company using a name is brought up, even though some people will be searching for their lesser known isonyms.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Google Search: www.slashdot.org
... faq ...
----------
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters
OSDN | Freshmeat | Jobs | Newsletters Slashdot X. Click
Here!
Description: Timely news source for technology related news with a heavy slant towards Linux and Open Source issues.
Yup, works like a charm.
Altavista easily failed the Via Technologies test the author used in google.
Sorry but AV is so 1998
It may be true that names are currently being dropped at a greater rate than they are being registered. However, has anyone here looked at the names being dropped? I have looked at them in both a) painstaking detail and b) written programs to narrow down tens of thousands of really useless names to a few dozen possibly useful names. For example of the junk being dropped, here is a tiny number of recently deleted names:
.net and .org names are now ditching them, keeping only the .com version of the name. This tells me that dot-com names are holding value better than the others.
0-0-TEEN-SEX.COM
0-CALLSANTA.COM
0-DOMAIN-REGISTRATION.COM
0-POINT.COM
0-SHIPPINGPERFUMEBASKETS.COM
00-FREE-WEB-PAGES.COM
000000000.COM
Lot's of long names, names with hyphens and numbers in them, and typos. Also, people who previously saved
I feel that a good name is still quite valuable, even if not as valuable as a year or two ago. There are few, if any names available today that could be called "jewels". So, if you have a good name, keep it, but if you're sitting on some junky names for speculative purposes, ditch them.
Don't expect people to purposely begin throwing valuable names away.
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
...is great for telling people "the URL is too long so just type this into google and it's the 2nd link".
This really is better if your site has a URL like:b low/cool_stuff/turing/passes.htm
http://www.podunk.edu/cs/prof/smith/student/~joe_
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But what about the return visitor that isn't 100% sure of the domain name, but they can get close.
Slashdot is the perfect example. It appears to me that they have both slashdot.org and slashdot.com registered and pointing to the same machine. But supposing Slashdot didn't have the .com address registered. What's to prevent someone else from picking it up? As is the case with Orange Juice, a very respectable demoscene resource, someone registered ojuice.com several months ago, and turned it into a porn site, hoping that sceners might accidentally type .com instead of .org. I'm sure it worked for a while...but it pissed off a lot of sceners.
Things could've been worse. After all, someone could've registered slashdot.com -- and created a spoof site (using the open source slash code) with no purpose other than to blacken the name of the real slashdot. It might have useless articles about porn, out dated technology, and stupid shit like that. What would that do for slashdot?
I don't know that I buy the arguement that more advertisement = less purchasing. I would assume by an increased attempt to advertise these items that people are registering them.
Alex
Link popularity, too, can be spammed. I saw an irrelevant porno site at the top of a Google search recently, and queried "links" to see who linked to it. It turns out that the porno operation has a huge number of interlinked domains, creating the illusion of popularity. They've found a way to spam Google.
Bob_Smith@thecompany.com is easy to remember, true. So is Bob_Smith@mail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, ect.
But many customers won't take you seriously if you're running your business's e-mail off a free yahoo or hotmail account.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If it wasn't for domain names email addresses might be as complicated as a phone number, and who can remember those.
Phone number? You can tell your clients to "look in the white pages" or "look in the yellow pages under widgets." That's roughly equivalent to "type our name into Google," especially if your business is in Open Directory.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Today, I will try an experiment.
I will disable my location bar.
The only time I will actually punch in a URL directly into the browser is if I have a URL in print that I have to go to, and it's not very generic (like, if I'm debuggin a web page at work, etc).
Anyhting I want to look at, I'll use google, even if I know the url.
Um...I think you're refering to the CDDB...
Unless I'm pulling a fast one on IMDB, they're still free. [They're owned by Amazon now, and the do have an 'IMDBpro' option, but the bulk of their data is still free.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
A few months ago they started pushing their Pay Upgrade more and more. Then they started slicing off quota space (down to 2.5 now)
Hotmail has ALWAYS had a 2.0 megabyte quota for the last two and a half years I've been on the system. If you always move all incoming messages to a local folder (trivial with Outlook Express) every time you log on, you will never run into the quota unless several people "send you this file in order to have your advice."
In fact just today I got an email from them informing me that I must now login once every 30 days or my account will lose all emails and contact lists.
Well, I log in nearly every day through Outlook Express's Hotmail support.
Unless I opt for the $19.95 Paid Upgrade of course...
Which also includes MSN Communities web hosting.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Funny thing is, both bike.co.uk and bikes.co.uk are not yet taken.
.uk domains automagically, as some do, add "-h whois.nic.uk" to the end of the command. Or you can just check them on the nic.uk website: bike.co.uk, bikes.co.uk.)
I think your whois client needs a little fixing: they were both registered two months ago. (If it doesn't look up
$ whois bikes.co.uk
Domain Name: BIKES.CO.UK
Registered For: UKIP Limited
Domain Registered By: UKIP
Record last updated on 16-Nov-2001 by .
Domain servers listed in order:
NS1.1ANETWORKS.NET 193.243.176.32
NS2.1ANETWORKS.NET 193.243.176.100
NS3.1ANETWORKS.NET 212.36.99.1
NS4.1ANETWORKS.NET 212.36.99.2
WHOIS database last updated at 16:00:00 17-Jan-2002
The NIC.UK Registration Host contains information ONLY for
registrations in the co.uk, org.uk, net.uk, ltd.uk, plc.uk,
sch.uk and me.uk second-level domains.
(bike.co.uk is pretty much identical.)
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
(In case you haven't heard, these endings were .NAME and .ME.UK).
In order to discourage domain name squatting, the registries have taken different approaches:
GNR (.NAME) are having an extensive series of pre-registration steps before domain enters the general registration period.
Nominet (.UK) went the other way, ratified it on the 11th January and launched it on the 14th (1 day before .NAME hit the headlines - coincidence? I think not). This way it hadn't gained too much "hype" momentum, general consumers being fairly unaware of its existence. Additionally, the price was set 10 times higher than normal (£50 + tax), at least initially, to discourage mass purchase of addresses. You're only meant to register your own name; and if a company registers yourdomain.me.uk, this is considered an abusive use of the system, and you should be able to challenge the registration.
Personally I've bought my own .me.uk domain name from Firevision. It may cost £64 for 2 years (about $90), but I think its worth it in the long run.
this verbalises something I have been experiencing of late... at work I have a Google toolbar which I installed, giving me a search box in my browser that went to the search engine of my choice (just like the good old days). Not only does this toolbar take me straight to Google, but it also keeps track of my most recent searches, which is handy if you realise you forgot to bookmark that page you just searched for...
but I digress... I have noticed that when I use another's browser, that does not have this toolbar, I feel surprised... "what! no Google? what kind of browser is this?"
I am no longer satisfied with a browser that cannot search Google easily.
domains are becoming less *and* more important at the same time... having decent search engines at our disposal, we can find what we are looking for, whether those with the domains like it or not...
and by that same token, excuses cannot be used by large corporations to bully small operators about "confusion" regarding domain name disputes.