ICANN Moves To Disable Domain Tasting

jehnx writes "Following Google's crackdown on 'domain tasters', ICANN has voted unanimously to eliminate the free period that many domain buyers have been taking advantage of. At the same meeting they also discussed Network Solutions' front running but took no action on it."

Comments

Re:Network Solutions

[tritonman]

Yea I think they are full of crap. I tried this myself, I searched on network solutions for some random domain name like kljihsd2342.com, it said it was available, then I decided that I would maybe go with register.com (we do have freedom of choice right?) and it said the domain was unavailable, it was registered by network solutions. This is most certainly abuse of power.

Re:Is this really about domain tasting

[Aladrin]

I RTFA. Their main concern was Domain Tasting, but Domain Kiting would be attacked by the same action they took, so it doesn't matter.

Re:Network Solutions

[badfish99]

So the solution is simply to do your searches on register.com if you're going to buy from them, and not to go to networksolutions.com at all.

Although: if ICANN eliminate the free tasting period, so that it costs network solutions some money for each domain they "protect from domain tasters" in this way, it would surely be fun to go to networksolutions.com and do a few hundred more searches for random domain names.

What is interesting to me...

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Is the fact that last night I was searching for a sprayfoam insulation company in maryland (using google), and the very first link that came up, was a domain taster domain registered 3 days prior to yesterday, that only had ads and click through sites on it...

It was most annoying, but the fact it came up as the first link, means google really should do soemthing about sites abusing the ranking systems and not just people abusing the adsense program.

Don't worry about the name

[Comboman]

It is so infuriating to have a good idea for a website, only to have 99% of the possible/good domain names being taken and being part of some advertizement network.

If you have a good idea for a website, pick a unique, memorable name, not an obvious one. Who's the number one auction site; auction.com or eBay? Who's the number one on-line bookseller; books.com or Amazon? What is an ebay anyway? What does a river in Brazil have to do with books? Nothing, it doesn't matter, most people are going to find your website through Google anyway rather than typing in a URL.

Re:Overall a great decision, but . . .

[SnapShot]

I understand your anecdote, but considering that a domain name only costs $9 I'm still on the side of banning the practice.

ICANN says it pretty eloquently:

Whereas, it is apparent that the AGP is being used for purposes for which it
was not intended;

Whereas, abuse of the AGP is, in the opinion of the majority of respondents
whose statements were collected by the GNSO Ad Hoc Group on Domain Name
Tasting (4 October 2007 report), producing disadvantages in the form of
consumer confusion and potential fraud that outweigh the benefits of the
AGP;

In other words, your experience has become the exception (by a factor of millions) not the rule and a few bad apples have ruined it for the rest of us.