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The Curious Histories of Generic Domain Names

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the awesome.com-idea.com dept.

cheezitmike writes "ITworld.com uses the Wayback Machine to document the histories of five generic domain names: music.com, eat.com, car.com, meat.com, and milk.com. 'In this brave new Web 2.0 world, it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there (see Flickr) or is so opaque as to offer no clue at all as to what the Web site is about (see del.icio.us). It's easy to forget the first Internet gold rush of the mid-to-late '90s, when dot-com domain names based on ordinary (and, investors hoped, marketable) nouns and verbs were snapped up by hopeful companies from the humble geeks who had purchased them (often ironically) in the early '90s.'"

56 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. still waiting by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm still waiting for someone to make me an offer on my domain: thissitewillmakemerich.com

    --
    This guy's the limit!
    1. Re:still waiting by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 3, Funny

      SOLD!



      (hehehe. sucker.)

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    2. Re:still waiting by fo0bar · · Score: 4, Funny

      I own iwantyoutogivemeyourmoney.com. Unfortunately, it hasn't been as profitable as I expected.

  2. Marketing Genius by deadeye766 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm no marketing genius, but who the hell thought domain names like meat.com and milk.com were going to be goldmines?!?

    1. Re:Marketing Genius by Ajehals · · Score: 3, Funny

      The same people who thought that people would be exclusively buying their milk and meat (and admittedly other foodstuffs) on-line by now, some of them were VC's and dumped a huge amount of cash on this IIRC..

    2. Re:Marketing Genius by phoebusQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Before web searching was as effective as it is now (largely thanks to Google), it wasn't illogical to think that people might type generic domains to find what they are looking for, i.e. meat.com if they are looking to order meat, get info on meat, or what have you.

      The idea that many marketers (and others) had is that not only would owning such domains get you more traffic, but it would also begin to associate the very idea of _noun_ on the web with your particular brand of _noun_.

    3. Re:Marketing Genius by KillerCow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm no marketing genius, but who the hell thought domain names like meat.com and milk.com were going to be goldmines?!?


      Someone who thought that they could sell meat.com to:
      The American Butchers' Association
      The German Butchers' Association
      Elite Butchers Association
      The National Meat Packers Association
      Alberta meat packers
      Butcher Consultants Ltd
      M&M Meat Shops
      PETA
      A Gay Porn Site

      Someone who thought that they could sell milk.com to:
      The USDA
      Dairy Farmers of Ontario (owner of milk.org)
      British Columbia Milk Marketing Board (milk-bc.com)
      Any other milk marketing board (big, subsidized, cash-rich, protected business)
      A Gay Porn Site

      I'm no marketing genius either, but I think that it would be safe to think that those names would be worth at least $1000 to any of those organizations. Turning $10 into $1000 is a pretty good scam if you can do it a couple of times.
    4. Re:Marketing Genius by techno-vampire · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why? You're no different from most slashdotters.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    5. Re:Marketing Genius by Dancindan84 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Call me paranoid, but there's no way on earth any sane person would just plug in meat.com expecting (hoping?) to find steaks on an internet full of porn (which it was even back then). I'm just going to type in gloryhole.com and see if it's a site on glass blowing... AH GOD MY EYES!!

      --
      "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    6. Re:Marketing Genius by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ehm, you're confusing "slashdotters with experience" and "normal people". Normal people would most certainly write things like "dinner.com" or "restaurant.com", just to stay a bit more realist. The GP is right, Google changed the market. Domain names aren't as important as they used to be, search ranks are.

      --
      Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    7. Re:Marketing Genius by jumpingfred · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Go to milk.com. It is some guys personal website from way back. He never sold it he never tried to sell it.

    8. Re:Marketing Genius by Firehed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How could a VC firm not be intelligent enough to realize that mail-order perishables isn't going to work out well, especially on cheap heavy things that would be a logistical nightmare to ship?

      I mean, sure, it looks like that whole world wide internet web thing is starting to catch on, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that you can't make much of a business of shipping a $4 gallon of milk. I suppose an online milkman type thing would stand a chance but people are so used to running out for milk every day anyways that it just wouldn't make sense. Margins on most foods are just too low for anything of that nature to make sense. I suppose filet mignon could work (and, indeed, I'm pretty sure you can buy it from Amazon these days) since it's got a much more workable price/weight ratio, but this is like pets.com thinking that shipping fifty-pound bags of kitty litter would work out.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    9. Re:Marketing Genius by JimDaGeek · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh, come on now. Non-tech people didn't have the same "dirty" thoughts as us geeks.

      I have 85 year old grandparents that have been married for over 50 years! Yeah, longer than most of us geeks were just a dirty thought in their daddy's head (no pun intended).

      Older people just don't put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4 when it comes to the inter-tubes. They are after all, a series of pipes.

      Now, as far as old school goes, I remember watching a pic download over a dog-old modem of a nude chick. Damn, talk about fun. I remember seeing the boobs start to show and then slowly the belly and then... damn, ouch mom, what was that slap for?

      --
      General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    10. Re:Marketing Genius by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      You give Google WAY too much credit. They were a late, late entrant to the search field, and were far more important in ad revenue than they ever were in search. Think Archie > Jughead > Lycos > AltaVista, Excite...... > google

    11. Re:Marketing Genius by OECD · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't think you guys are using your imagination. "milk.com" does not necessarily need to sell milk to be a marketing goldmine.

      You're almost there...

      • br3@st milk

      Bingo! With that and "meat.com" and you can almost print money...

      --
      One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
    12. Re:Marketing Genius by El+Yanqui · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well as a former employee of Kozmo.com when they first opened in Seattle, I can say with a bit of authority that VCs in the late 90s didn't realize a hell of a lot. "Deliver movies ordered online in an hour? With no delivery charge? Something, something. Profit!"

      --
      Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
    13. Re:Marketing Genius by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How could a VC firm not be intelligent enough to realize that mail-order perishables isn't going to work out well, especially on cheap heavy things that would be a logistical nightmare to ship?

      Given the extensive history of companies selling perishables mail order, I'd suspect the lack of intelligence is on the part of the Slashdot poster rather than the VC firms. Omaha Steaks has been doing it since at least the 70's (I say at least because I think I have an even earlier advertisement from them somewhere in my files, but cannot locate it ATM). Swiss Colony even longer. In fact, such shipping has been going on since dry ice was first produced in industrial quantites in the 1920's.
       
      Look in the advertisements of most National Geographics of the 50's, or and food magazine from the same era, and you'll see ads aplenty.
       
      </culinary_geek>
       
      The mistake the VC firms of the dot bomb era made was, as you point out, marketing the wrong things to the wrong demographic. However, given the history of food deliveries and the increased performance of shipping companies as the 90's advanced - and it wasn't clearly obvious that their schemes were off the mark. (Doubly so since the big grocery chains have been slowly expanding into online ordering...)
       
      Foresight isn't always 20-20 on Slashdot either, back in the day there were a lot of posts explaining how Amazon and Netflix were going to fail 'any day now'. They simply couldn't compete with bricks-and-mortar everyone said. The future lay with clicks-and-mortar, with Barnes and Noble, and Blockbuster...
  3. Forgot one by billius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    porn.com

    1. Re:Forgot one by gbaldwin2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      sex.com was the fun one. With all the who-stole-what intrigue.

    2. Re:Forgot one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      By friend owned beef.com for years, kept trying to sell it to ranchers, PETA rented it for some time, I kept telling him to run a gay porn site on it.

      He still has tobacco.com which has had several UDRP attempted hijackings on it.

    3. Re:Forgot one by dryueh · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Forgot another one: jesus.com

      I'm sure many of us remember the "Win a date with Jesus" site that lived at jesus.com for many, many years. You could even take a bath with Jesus. I've often wondered how it was that always-datable Jesus came to sell the domain.

    4. Re:Forgot one by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

      The hosting costs crucified him

      --
      Monstar L
  4. The operative word is "almost" by winkydink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there...

    The only reason companies resort to those names is because (a) all the good ones are taken and/or (b) there are potential trademark infringement issues with using more common sounding names.

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

    1. Re:The operative word is "almost" by pegr · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there...
       
      Like slashdot?

  5. Remember domain names BEFORE the web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remember that domain names pre-date the world wide web. Someone may have been using barf.com as a simple FTP site and never had a web page associated with it.

    1. Re:Remember domain names BEFORE the web by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Funny

      Remember that domain names pre-date the world wide web. Someone may have been using barf.com as a simple FTP site and never had a web page associated with it. You kids and yer newfangled 'domain names'! Sheesh! Why, in my day, we had !-paths. To e-mail someone far away was truly an exercise in typing:

      Remember that domain names pre-date the world wide web. Someone may have been using barf.com as a simple FTP site and never had a web page associated with it. You could tell the route your mail was gonna take! And we LIKED it that way!

      Now you kids get off my lawn!

      Domain names, indeed. *shakes head in disgust*

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Remember domain names BEFORE the web by smellsofbikes · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was at a small, but unaccountably well-connected college, sending email to my dad, who was working at a big tech company. Usually I just copied whatever route he'd chosen, and then marvelled as my mail got to him in LESS THAN TWO HOURS -- the very idea! At the time, it was still pretty unusual that two people would both have access to email, so I actually showed off to my friends -- "hey look at THIS!"
      Well, one of my friends knew more than me, so he taught me about uuhosts -- a way to find out what was connected, for the times when my email was just vanishing because something, somewhere, was offline. So I used it. The next day I got some Very Crabby Email from a sysop who tore me a new one for using a satellite uplink to send personal email to Japan and back.

      It felt like having a switchboard operator yell at me. I was *mortified* and I didn't even know for sure what I'd done.

      --
      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    3. Re:Remember domain names BEFORE the web by gbaldwin2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I did something similar. I worked for a company that was doing software for the Boeing 777 and we polled them like every 10 minutes. We also polled sun and hp, 2 fairly well connect west coast servers. One day I came into work and our uucp links were melting down with email traffic (probably 50 emails an hour or something lame like that). The new UUCP maps had come out and we were the shortest hop to Boeing from just about anywhere. I ended up changing the maps to make us look more distant and implementing some email filtering. Good times...

    4. Re:Remember domain names BEFORE the web by idontgno · · Score: 2, Funny

      In Soviet Russia, kremvax bang paths you!

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  6. Over all these years by Hsien-Ko · · Score: 5, Funny

    purple.com always delivered what it promises.

    1. Re:Over all these years by Firehed · · Score: 2, Funny

      Having been super-goatse'd from following a slashdotter's advice before, do I dare probe this domain for a sarcasm tag from work?

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    2. Re:Over all these years by Firehed · · Score: 2, Funny

      Huh, truth in advertising... a rare occurrence these days. And certainly better than goatse.

      Oh goatse... that will haunt me forever.

      Ugh, damn. I'm thinking about it again.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
  7. Am I in that group? by skinny.net · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had a couple offers to buy my domain by 2 different owners and eras of skinny.com. I decided that an easy to remember URL and email address was worth more than they offered. The big bid was $5k, but half in cash, half in services I didn't need.

    I wasn't holding out for the $big, but would take it of course. It was a personal investment, not a financial one.

  8. A great name does not a great site make by Nemilar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The biggest advantage to a generic domain name is that you'll get lots of type-ins; for example, freemusic.com* I'm sure gets hundreds of hits a day, just from (unknowing) users typing it in, hoping for something good.

    But in the new era, sites become popular because they are viral; flickr didn't become popular because of type-ins, it became popular because it offered a good service that people found useful, and it spread.

    --A great name does not a great site make; but a great site can a great name make.-- Heck, just at Google! Verb, noun, and fun to say!

    (*Disclaimer: I have no idea what's at freemusic.com, but I'm guessing it's parked by someone)

    --
    Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
    1. Re:A great name does not a great site make by forty7 · · Score: 3, Informative

      He's not talking like Yoda, he's talking like Richard Lovelace. To quote: "Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron bars a cage."

      Someone please tell me that this is still a well-known quote, even if the source isn't. Please :o)

  9. The Future by carrier+lost · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Hello, internet? I'd like some meat, please."

    "Just send it right over. Thanks, bye"

    --
    XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
  10. ANUS.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    http://www.anus.com/

    Never a greater disappointment in a web site's contents in my WHOLE LIFE.

    1. Re:ANUS.com by Quattro+Vezina · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well, the people who run anus.com are Neo-Nazi assholes, so the name fits.

      --
      I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
  11. Opera by NewsWatcher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have sometimes wondered what Opera aficionados make of opera.com

    I am sure someone at Slashdot will know how Opera got its name. I kind of guessed that some geek way back bought the domain name thinking it would be worth millions, then in the end used it for a company cause it was cool to have a generic domain.

    Some domain names have been useful though. In Australia people sell ".au.com" domains, which are obviously sub-domains, quite different to Australia's official ".com.au" domains.

    --
    If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
    1. Re:Opera by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Funny

      Opera is the singular of opus, "work". Easy enough to figure out why the browser uses that name.

      Is that meant to be ironic? Web browsers are what people use to *not* work.

    2. Re:Opera by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 2, Funny

      Opera used to use opera.no as its primary domain, as they didn't own opera.com


      That must have driven their marketing people batshit.
    3. Re:Opera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, the browser that doesn't work is called "Internet Explorer".

      Oh wait, I see what you mean now.

    4. Re:Opera by jfruhlinger · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, it's the other way around. Opus is singluar, opera is plural.

  12. milk.com FAQ by xanthines-R-yummy · · Score: 2, Funny

    I love the FAQ milk.com! It's so appropriately craptastastic, I almost feel nostalgic...

  13. stupid.com by phobos13013 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, I must say I never thought of making a /. article out of this one, but since about 1999 which is when I started working on my own computers for hobby, I would use stupid.com as a network test to see if I was online or not and not just loading a cached page (since I only go there when I am testing my network once in a blue moon...) One thing I have noticed about this site, it still feels like I'm in 1999 when I load it...

    --
    ...and it should be known by now
  14. apple.com by Tuoqui · · Score: 3, Funny

    Whoever got apple.com must have been sitting on a goldmine.

    --
    09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
    +2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
  15. Obligatory Anchorman Reference by kellyb9 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Milk was a BAD choice"

  16. Badge of honor? by spectecjr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Badge of honor to have an opaque domain name?

    Not so.

    Try registering a domain name that isn't opaque. It's nearly impossible these days - people bought all the obvious ones, and most of the non-obvious ones. Most of them are just domain squatters hoping to get rich, or spamvertising sites.

    --
    Coming soon - pyrogyra
  17. Re:Dreadful names by sukotto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've often thought it would be cool if meat.com redirected to Terry Bisson's story, They're Made of Meat

    --
    Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
  18. Codeplex.com by Brobock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was the original owner of "Codeplex.com" (Not so obvious of a name) before I sold it to Microsoft for a eye whopping $600. The site is now Microsoft's official opensource repository.

    Microsoft created an umbrella company who specifically designed a horrendous website with no links back to them. Even after the research (which I found nothing), I thought I would be a nice guy and sell it to this nobody.

    I know they did that so they didn't have to payout larger sums of money, but I still feel as if I was screwed first hand by Microsoft.

    1. Re:Codeplex.com by lzcd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So you feel cheated because you didn't get a chance to cheat someone else?

  19. Poop.com by cheesyfru · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ahhh.. the good old days, when Poop.com was a shop for fossilized dinosaur dung. Endangered feces, indeed.

    --
    Josh Woodward
  20. Testing a Content Filter with Sex.com by Ohio+Calvinist · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We always used to use sex.com at my first job to make sure the content filter was working properly... ahh... the days of Microsoft Proxy Server 2.0. At first we did it just because it was the most obvious thing we could think of. Later someone suggested using other adult orieted websites, to which, we decided that if it did go through, we didn't want to have to explain why backdoorsluts.com was on the report that went to management (to the female city manager).

    Its one thing to test a proxy, another to explain to management your choice in samples. :)

    --
    Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
  21. art.com by CrazyTalk · · Score: 2, Informative

    Reminds me of art.com, a web site I consulted for (different company from current owners of that domain). Before the site specializing in selling posters and prints was launched in the late 90s, the art.com domain belonged to Advanced Rotorcraft Technology, some helicopter tech organization. IIRC, the poster company paid something like half a million dollars for the domain.

  22. Domain Gold Rush 2.0 by WebmasterNeal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I suspect that in the next 10-20 years there will be a big rush on people's full names. Currently only web developers and bloggers have their own name as a domain but as the web becomes more and more popular and a part of people's life, they will eventually buy their own name and point it somewhere.

    That's why I own http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/ and grosskopf.name. Having your last name as a domain is nice because it allows you to create sub-domains of family members and create email addresses such as neal@grosskopf.name.

    --
    "During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
  23. Yahhoo.com by Jesus+IS+the+Devil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back in 1997 or so I remember going to a computer lab and a TA warned us not to type an extra "h" in yahoo.com (yahoo.com). That site actually made the news because it offered up porn for people who mis-typed.

    The guy was threatened and sued I believe. He even made the news... Anyways I think the owner succumbed and let the domain lapse.

    That's when I found it and registered it for fun. I remember setting up a catch-all email address, and would get thousands of emails (back during when spam wasn't that bad yet). It was interesting reading love letters, business proposals, nude pics, etc...

    But then it got old, so I let it lapse too.

    --

    eTrade SUCKS