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66.3 Million Domain Names Registered
IO ERROR writes "VeriSign announced that 5.1 million new domains were registered in the third quarter of 2004, and that there are now 66.3 million active domain names, both the highest numbers ever. It also said that the percentage of domains registered to live Web sites has increased and country code top-level domains are becoming more widely accepted."
What a milestone. Or not? Is it any wonder that now there are more registered names than before? Would you expect inverse? Let's post this kind of stuff every month!
And then - I'm sure they are counting only 2nd level names, right? And country-specific names are not included, are they? informatics.uni.edu and economics.uni.edu are counted as one? the-company.com and thecompany.com are counted as two?
Finally - what constitutes a "live" web-site? "Under construction" counts? And why a web-site? Is there a rules that every resolved domain name should have a web-server at port 80?
Well, the second biggest TLD in numbers of registered domains is the .de domain for some time now (I don't know for how long... one year, two years ?). And both .uk and .nl aren't small fish either.
The DENIC (the registry for the german .de TLD) has an interesting
graph showing the number of domains in the ten biggest TLDs (in english).
I myself have been dumb enough to first enquire about a few (nosoup4u.com/nosoup4u.net) ; only to find out the hard way it had been registered only a couple days later.
If the site(s) would at least be used, it wouldn't be too disturbing to me... but since it's only registered, to be bought over by the highest bidder...
I also know it's very hard to regulate this ; and even harder to 'check' if someone is really 'using' a site ; As , after all, someone could be using it (without my knowledge) purely to use it for, eg. FTP transfers, and not a website.
Still, it gives me a sour taste in my mouth.
You know... Every registar I've had let me renew my addresses way before they'd expire and even have a "saftey period" right after they expire before anyone can re-register it. Of course maybe I've just got good registars, but seriously if you aren't really watching your domains and renewing them then perhaps you don't really want to keep them.
I've got a hunch more than a few of those domains just happened to be "sold" to those scripts. It's more logical.
Wasn't it policy back in the dark ages (I seem to remember it from '88-'90 or so) that you could get one (and only one) domain name per company. headache.com and constipation.com wouldn't both go to Johnson & Johnson or some other drug company; you'd have just johnson-and-johnson.com.
Is this a false memory? I also seem to recall that microsoft.com had just launched its MSN service to go head-to-head with Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL. And to get the domain name msn.com, didn't they create a small business just down the street from the main campus, something like Micro Solutions Networking (MSN)? I swear I could remember doing a whois on it in like '92 or so and seeing the highly suspicious street address.
One note about Go Daddy. I checked the availability of a domain name on Go Daddy. It was available. Then a couple months later I went to register it and it had been bought by a squatter. This has happened to me not once, but twice. Is Go Daddy selling their whois lookups to squatters?
country code top-level domains are becoming more widely accepted.
Speaking of country code TLDs, anyone know for sure when .eu will become available? I've been waiting for that for a year now.
It's worse than that - many single-page sites will have multiple domains pointing to them...
Ydco co
we now expect that of that 66 million, 90% are probably like this and not as they should be.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I had a theory like that too. I was interested in getting a site that was my own (uncommon) last name. I ran several whois searches over a few weeks while I thought about it. Then when I finally decided to buy it, it was gone.
:(
It is now a redirect to seeq.com, and my family name is shamed
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
No all registars do that, you have a safety period of about a month. There's still a big rush to grab the domain after this period. Especially since search engines are now giving higher weight to websites that have been around for a while. I guarantee if you have PR 6 or higher and you let your domain expire, there will be every damn search engine spammer and their mom trying to get your domain.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
On our network more often I see them for irc kiddies than anything else (vainity domains). They will take the free or low cost offer of a registrar and then let it expire since by the time its time to pay, they are bored with it.
.tv, they might get watching.tv and make their irc domain
t v
like
was.screwing.your.wife.while.you.were.watching.
and other silly shit like that.
ICANN *should* do something, but I'm afraid they won't. What would be interesting, is get the popular popup blockers to also block domains that don't have any real information, such as Domain Parked websites, domains for sale messages, etc and get rid of all the damn traffic they grab by parking the domains. Or go back to making domains $150 a registration, instead of 6 bucks (maybe opening up registration to everyone was a _bad_ move). I would certainly think twice about registering 100 domains at $150 each, but 6 bucks?
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.