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?
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.
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?