The Ascendancy of .co

An anonymous reader tipped the fact that, with the .com namespace getting pretty well mined out, GoDaddy.com's front page for domain registrations now defaults to .co instead of .com. The article claims that GoDaddy registers about half of new domain names. Neither the article nor GoDaddy makes it explicit that .co is a ccTLD belonging to Colombia, or that registering one costs about three times as much as a .com, at $29.99 per year. And if you select a .co domain name from GoDaddy's front page, a number of TLD variants are presented alongside .co — but .com is not among them.

Comments

citibank.co

[HongPong]

now with moar than $100 billion in frictionless laundered money. That's what we call .colocation!

Re:citibank.co

[devbox]

With the US government increasingly taking over .com domains they don't like (torrent and video streaming sites and pharmacy and gambling sites that are only illegal in the US) it's only good that GoDaddy promotes ccTLD's outside US gov control.

It's not mined out.

[bmo]

It's squatted, sniped, tasted, and front-run out.

When a speculator can register thousands of names and move them around for free by playing the system, is there any wonder that .com is "mined out"? When a registrar front-runs domain names (Network Solutions) and fills the space with reserved names for itself, is there any wonder that .com is "mined out"?

Get rid of domain tasting and other shenanigans and the problem will go away.

--
BMO

Re:It's not mined out.

[Nursie]

This.

Also 'investors'. A little while back I read an online article by someone congratulating themselves on investing in .com names. He was going through a dictionary, finding obscure words and testing to see if they were available, then buying them up. He had about 30 dictionary words and he was going to make money on the idea, also encouraging others to do the same.

It's one of those times when you wish you could reach through the screen and strangle the person on the other side. Squatters, 'investors' and other assorted asshats have between them sat on pretty much and word or word combination in existence, meaning that 99% of them just aren't used, ever.

It's a shame that money-hungry tools have been able to do this. Maybe the internet was better in the early 90s.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's our (the geeks') fault for setting it up so that these opportunities exist. Every time the topic of additional top level domains comes up, the same people who complain about domain squatting also get up in arms about making a scarce resource less scarce and thereby less attractive for squatting.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Kosi]

The easy solution would be a "use it or lose it" rule where the ownership of a domain that is just parked will be revoked when someone else would like to register it.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can trivially set up a mail account, subscribe to a few newsletters and ignore any "use it or lose it" kind of rules. The internet is more than just the web, remember?

Re:It's not mined out.

[Hazelfield]

Yep. When you can type in http://slashdo.org/ and get to a junk "search portal", you know it's too easy to register a domain name.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a shocker for you - there's also not much unclaimed real estate just waiting for you to come by and snap it up.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Nursie]

Yes, but most often that's in use, which is a different thing.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Raenex]

Get rid of domain tasting

It's pretty much gone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting

"ICANN reported in August 2009, that prior to implementing excess domain deletion charges, the peak month for domain tastings was over 15 million domain names. After the $0.20 fee was implemented, this dropped to around 2 million domain names per month. As a result of the further increase in charges for excess domain deletions, implemented starting April 2009, the number of domain tastings dropped to below 60 thousand per month."

I know from personal experience that a domain I had let lapse and was sat on for years became available again after the ICANN policy was put in place.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

before we need IPV12

Re:It's not mined out.

[jafiwam]

Obviously, they didn't, ya dumb motherfucker or the problem would not still be happening. Maybe they fixed one small aspect of the problem, but it's easy to get around.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apologies in advance; this is going to be harsh... It's called capitalism - supply and demand, scarcity, etc. The hippielove ideal of the internet is long gone. These days it's nothing for a company to spend $5k, $50k or more for a generic domain that drives traffic to their site. A single magazine spread can cost that much for a month. It's not squatting or anything else you want to label it, it really is investing in a valuable asset.

What you're really saying is that you're jealous you didn't register these names. Out here in the real world valuable things have a price tag. If you're not aggressive enough to take advantage of it then the rest of the world will pass you by in a heartbeat.

Re:It's not mined out.

[kyrio]

If idiots stopped paying more than $10 for a domain then it wouldn't be a problem. Every time I've contacted a domain owner about a domain I laugh at them and re-offer $10 for their shitty domain when they tell me it "costs $595".

The problem is that you have idiots accepting ridiculous amounts for worthless domains when the domain doesn't even matter anymore. I've been to many a site with a meaningless domain or a domain that is very long or a domain with a random tld and they've had no problem with traffic because they have a good website or provide something that people need.

Re:It's not mined out.

[John Hasler]

I have a domain that I currently use only for email but it is still in use. The Web is not the Net.

And who is going judge what constitutes "use" anyway? Are you going to visit each of millions of Web sites and determine which are "real" and which are merely parked?

Re:It's not mined out.

[hey]

Yes, its frustrating. I am trying to come with the a .com name and most of the a names are squatted (Registered but no website or godaddy.com website.)

Re:It's not mined out.

[Kosi]

I know that WWW ist just one of many services. And a definition of "use" (or better of what kind of behaviour leads to losing the domain) that eliminates most of the speculants and cybersquatters but doesn't hurt other people shouldn't be too difficult to find.

And if it's only done on request by someone with serious interest in using the domain, there would be no need to "visit millions of websites".

Re:It's not mined out.

[lwsimon]

In some cases, it makes financial sense to pay some. I was looking to start a gun reviews site a while back, and had a $500 budget for a domain name. I found one - I think it was gunreviews.org - and sent them an email offering $500. I got an automated response that they would not be accepting any offers under $2,500.

Meawhile, something like "buyviagraonline.com" would be worth thousands.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Tokerat]

Obviously you're not from Detroit.

Re:It's not mined out.

[wshs]

If it has a for sale page up the week after registration, or it's hosted via sedo or information.com or other popular cybersquatters, that is a good indicator it's not in use.

Re:It's not mined out.

[SteveFoerster]

Flamebait? Seriously? What a stupid mod.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Rudolf]

Yes, its frustrating. I am trying to come with the a .com name and most of the a names are squatted (Registered but no website or godaddy.com website.)
The web is not the internet. There are many more things to use a domain for than just a website.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are you asking to buy the domain from them? Just setup your page with a meaningless domain name and be done with it.

Re:It's not mined out.

[JorDan Clock]

I live in the suburbs of Detroit and I can tell you all of the land in Detroit IS in use.

By burned down buildings.

Re:It's not mined out.

[edibobb]

This would be hard to enforce. Parkers could get around this by making an random web site (maybe a single photo and link) for each parked domain.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Kosi]

So what? That scheme would be obvious enough. They would have to come up with more complexity in the generated pages, register the domains to many different real people and so on. Maybe we'll have to add fines for "professional" parkers in the recipe.

OK, I admit that it's no sooo easy. But it would be a huge advancement to the situation now without being technically unrealistic.

And there is one thing I forgot: any abuse of domain tasting must be severely punished.

Re:It's not mined out.

[evilviper]

Get rid of domain tasting and other shenanigans and the problem will go away.

You're a good couple years behind. "Tasting" is long-dead.

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm

So now would you like to try again to regail us with your extensive insight into the domain name system, and the answers to all our problems?

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

The easy solution is to make them cost more and be non-refundable.

Re:It's not mined out.

[wkcole]

The easy solution would be a "use it or lose it" rule where the ownership of a domain that is just parked will be revoked when someone else would like to register it.

It is non-trivial to define "parked" in regards to a domain name in a way that is fair. I have 2 .com domains registered. One I've used since the price of a .com name was writing a justification memo to the InterNIC. I registered the other one in the late 90's when I thought I might want to migrate off the old one (complicated story) but I've never done so. My old registrar consideredd both of those domains "parked" simply because I didn't use their DNS servers for either of them, but in fact the old domain was and is in constant use while the newer one mostly has just had a stub DNS zone. I have held on to that name because I know that I *MAY* at some point want to have a domain name that is more market-friendly than the one I've used forever. Not all possible names are equal, and for over a decade I've paid to hold a claim on the name I would like to have IF I am in a position where I want to have one that people can remember and spell. Am I using the name? I would argue that I am, because I have a contingency plan that relies on it being available to me. At less than $1 per month, it is a cheap piece of insurance.

I think a much better approach would be to regulate registrar practices more tightly to fully eliminate "tasting" and to keep registrars out of the domain speculation and hostage-taking business. New registrations should cost at least twice as much as renewals. Once a freshly registered name has NS records published, the registration fee should be non-refundable. Expiration of a registration should have a uniform result between all registrars: glue NS and whois records should be *deleted* on the day of expiration and after a short grace period the name should revert to the "virgin" pool available equally to all registrars. A registrar should not be able to sell any name for more than what it charges for a new registration of a name.

Oh, and world peace would be good too. And pie.

Re:It's not mined out.

[pspahn]

If I remember correctly, it used to cost significantly more to register domains. I'm pulling the figure $120 or so for a year's registration (circa '96 or so?). Then people started seeing the value and it developed into a full blown market.

I wouldn't be against the prices being raised back to former levels across all top level names. For those who have a legitimate use for the name, the cost is still not that high, but high enough to force squatters to rethink their approach.

Re:It's not mined out.

[Kosi]

Oh, "registering a domain in order to treat it as a good to be sold", maybe with an added "especially when not making any real use in terms of running stuff like websites, mail, ssh, VPN, ..." seems like a good starter to me.

And in your case, I would suspect that - assuming your business is not selling domains - your (businesses') name or what you do and the domain name give clear evidence that you had no malicious intent.

Re:It's not mined out.

[innocent_white_lamb]

$ whois gunreviews.org
[Querying whois.publicinterestregistry.net]
[whois.publicinterestregistry.net]
NOT FOUND

Looks like you can have it now for the price of registering it.

Re:It's not mined out.

[nedlohs]

I doubt it. Accepting email (and then ignoring it) costs the "speculants and cybersquatters" nothing - they just point them all at the same mail server just as they do with the web servers.

Plus, why is putting up a page of advertisements not "using"?

Re:It's not mined out.

[Kosi]

I doubt it. Accepting email (and then ignoring it) costs the "speculants and cybersquatters" nothing - they just point them all at the same mail server just as they do with the web servers.

Oh my. Just imagine this: guy wants to register $HISNAME-software.com that is taken by a domain grabber. Guy goes to some kind of ombudsman who gives the thing a closer look and easily sees that the running mailserver is just an alibi. Domain will be transferred, grabber maybe fined.

Sure, you could never really get all of them, if we make sure not to have "false positives", but why shouldn't we at least get rid of the big ones, where it is easy to proove?

Plus, why is putting up a page of advertisements not "using"?

Because of the missing content?!

Re:It's not mined out.

[epa]

This has been the case for trade marks for years. If you do not use a trade mark, your registration can be invalidated. The use has to be "bona fide" and there is a requirement of good faith for the registration to be valid in the first place. This legally prevents "parking" of trade marks, but present no obstacle to genuine trade mark users. This, and the higher application fees, keep the trade mark system free from becoming clogged up.

Re:It's not mined out.

[lwsimon]

Wow, lol. This wasn't a month ago, and it was squatted. Purchased, and thanks!

Re:It's not mined out.

[nedlohs]

I have email addresses that I check one a year, I'd be mighty pissed if you decided that was just "an alibi".

How is advertising not content?

Re:It's not mined out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but most often that's in use, which is a different thing.

Take a drive through the deserts of California. You'll see millions of acres of unused land, but don't try just puling over and staking your claim.

Re:It's not mined out.

[kyrio]

You missed the point of the post, obviously. Domains aren't worth anything more than the basic registration price. If I want a squatted domain I'll tell them I will give them $10 for it. If they don't want to sell it then they can continue to pay for the registration until the end of time. People seem to think that the domain is actually important to a site's success. It isn't at all. The site being good is important to the site's success. You can register ovesantyairety.com and it'll be successful as long as you can get people to link to it because the content is worth something.

.co for company ?

[whiteboy86]

.co.uk
.co.jp
.co.nz

are already in use as a company designator so why not ? but what about the collision with the Colombia state domain ?

Re:.co for company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh*

Re:.co for company ?

[nyctopterus]

...and .co.ck

(Cook Islands, really, look it up!)

Re:.co for company ?

[Jedi Alec]

Just for Colombia we'll instate .co.ca (sorry Canadians).

*snort*

Re:.co for company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

suck.my.co.ck

Re:.co for company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised there has never been a my.co.ck pr0n page.

Re:.co for company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

likewise

Re:.co for company ?

[empedocles]

So far it seems to work when you say it out loud. Writing it or reading it is another challenge.

Unfortunately, the most common response we've gotten from my company's .co domain is "there's a typo in your email/business card/publication etc." i.e. "you forgot the 'm'"

We're using another name instead with a .com for our primary url. Still waiting for people to be accustomed to the .co domain. Too bad since our .co domain would be much simpler.

Re:.co for company ?

[SteveFoerster]

In return, let Canadians use the ccTLD for Western Sahara.

Re:.co for company ?

[Macrat]

.co.uk
.co.jp
.co.nz


are already in use as a company designator so why not ? but what about the collision with the Colombia state domain ?

You don't like .co.co?

Re:.co for company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Famously used in Nathan Barley. OK, maybe not that famous, but very funny.

Re:.co for company ?

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN has .co.co?

The right question

[geogob]

The question we should ask ourselves is whether or not we should accept domain name registration as a commercial practice. The moment we say 'yes' to this question, and it seems to me that this was the general answer since very early in the life of the DNS, we shouldn't neither be surprised nor shocked to see common commercial practices being used by these registrar.

If you buy the nice looking shirt for twice the price right at the entrance of the store, it's your problem I guess. But still, there's a difference. Most of us are aware of common commercial practice to lure clients into more expensive product. We sometimes choose to ignore or forget them, but we still are globally aware of them. But, somehow, we forget that similar rules apply to online businesses as well, probably due to the lack of personal interaction.

Re:The right question

[windcask]

The question we should ask ourselves is whether or not we should accept domain name registration as a commercial practice.

How about a resounding yes? The vast majority of sites on the internet are used for businesses. ".com" is short for "commercial," you know. If you want to talk about taking ".org" domains out of the commercial registration pool, there are practices that might be put in place to restrict their use in a way that ".edu" and ".gov" are used. I think you would be a little late to the party, though.

Re:The right question

[geogob]

Just so we are clear on that, I'm not suggesting anything. I honestly do not know the right answer to this complex question myself.

But I want to put emphasis on the point that I'm talking about the registration process of a domain name, not the actual websites behind theses names. I'm referring to the fact that registrars are commercial websites themselves, employing commercial tactics I would expect from every other commercial websites or store.

Re:The right question

[JorDan Clock]

Umm... Yes. Why treat DNS any different than real estate? It is a digital form of real estate. If someone wants to buy land at an exorbitant price and not bother to check if it's even what they want, why is it the fault of the system? GoDaddy is being shady, sure, but it's not some kind of fundamental flaw because we let people commercialize domain registration.

Re:The right question

[Tacvek]

Real eastate is an extremely good model for how the DNS system should be run.

In places with significant unused land (for our purposes preserves and protected wilderness would be considered used) it is often possible to obtain ownership of such land by simply claiming it, and using it. (Law varies by nation, but this still occurs, and was far more common in the past).

In all other cases you buy land from an existing holder.

Regardless of one one obtains the land though, one must still pay any property tax, or forfeit the land. Tax is payed to the Sovereign entity that controls the land.
--
That maps nicely to the domain name system. Unregistered domains can be obtained freely, but one must pay the annual fee which is equivalent to a fixed fee property tax. Since the TLD's Registry would be the closest equivalent to a government, they would get the fee.

Of course if one wants a registered domain (inhabited land) one can always obtain it by uying it from the owner. That is still true of the DNS.

Notice though that the real estate system does not have anything remotely like the registrars. They just don't fit in correctly. They serve absolutely no purpose. The whole thing came from other companies wanting a slice of Network Solution's domain registration profits. The whole problem is that they should never have been making a profit. They should having been charging only what it took to maintain the registry, including the TLD's main DNS servers.

Let the free market operate for DNS just as it does with real estate, where the market is between (current and prospective) owners of land, not been prospective owners of land and for-profit pseudo-governmental entities.

Dirty business

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is fuel to two dirty business: domain names and CA business. One is asking money for words, or creating ass-expensive database records, the other is selling "trust" and abusing the word in every meaning.

Godaddy mistake?

[wlad]

Is it only GoDaddy doing this? In which case it might just as well simply be a mistake. Who, in their right mind, would choose the Columbian domain instead of one of the many new top level domains as new default?

Re:Godaddy mistake?

[amaupin]

I use Godaddy almost exclusively for my many (too many) domains... that said, let's be honest.

It's not a mistake. Their checkout process is designed to wave as many unnecessary - yet seemingly useful - options as possible in front of novice domain customers, in hopes that one or two will fall into their basket by mistake. No doubt their logs are full of new customers landing and searching for an unavailable .com domain, repeat, repeat, repeat, give up.

Now by defaulting to .co and hiding .com they can sell a shit ton of Columbian domains like "smithfamily.co" to unsuspecting customers, and at a higher price, too!

Re:Godaddy mistake?

[RDW]

Yes, no mistake. They were pushing this even before it became available for sale:

http://community.godaddy.com/godaddy/co-claim-your-opportunity/

'Pre-registration is now open for the newest truly global and recognizable domain name extension to come along in years: .co -- It's used everywhere as an abbreviation for Company, Corporation, and Commerce. Let it vault your company into the global Internet marketplace!

Here's your chance to grab domain names that have been taken for years with the .com extension. Pre-registration includes application periods for trademark holders and others.'

Re:Godaddy mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither Columbia the school or the city have their own TLD.

Re:Godaddy mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just nitpicking:

Columbia is any of dozens of places and geographical features north of Rio Grande. Colombia is the country in South America you're speaking of -- land of coffee, guerrillas and really hot chicks :)

Re:Godaddy mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a mistake. And it's not GoDaddy. Lots of countries have decided to (or have been enticed into) selling their country-code TLDs in the general market. Some examples are .bz (Belize), .md (Moldova), .tv (Tuvalu) and .ws (Samoa). There's a much longer list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain

And it's not GoDaddy that's trying to get a hunk of money out of the market. If it were, I'd be selling .co for $10/year. The problem is that it costs me $25.00. It's the same squatter mentality that buys up the .com domain names that buy up all the Country Code TLDs even close to suitable for generic use. For the details behind who's making money on .co, see the Wikipedia entry, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.co

I'd suggest: "just say no".

Who's your Godaddy, mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where else are the drug cartels going to park their new sites?

garbage domains

[newviewmedia.com]

No different from .tv or any other new top level domain. It is currently possible to open up any tld you want now (.city .dog .etc) if you have around $100,000 and the capabilities to manage a registrar through Icaan. However, .com, .net .org and country tld will always be king in people minds. .travel has been around forever and nobody uses it. Expect more of the same with all these new domains coming on the market.

Re:garbage domains

[shutdown -p now]

.co is a country TLD. It's just misused, in largely the same was as .me, .nu, and many others.

Re:garbage domains

[KDR_11k]

So is .tv, Tuvalu.

Re:garbage domains

[Anonymous Coward]

.co is a country TLD. It's just misused, in largely the same was as .me, .nu, and many others.

Which is the reason I went with a .name domain for my personal website and personal email. Misuse of country TLDs should be actively discouraged.

Re:garbage domains

[Anonymous Coward]

What would you consider misuse of a country TLD? Domains are administrative boundaries. If you're ok with using a domain that is governed by the rules of a company or government in a foreign country, and you abide by their rules, then what is wrong with that?

Re:garbage domains

[Urkki]

What would you consider misuse of a country TLD? Domains are administrative boundaries. If you're ok with using a domain that is governed by the rules of a company or government in a foreign country, and you abide by their rules, then what is wrong with that?

Of course the entire top level domain thing is largely broken from today's point of view, because it's so US-centric. Non-country domains should be global. Country domains should be somehow related to that country.

What I mean is, if you go to porn.<country tld>, you should get porn site from that country, or at least content with "performers" who are mostly from that country, and advertising meant for that country, even for foreign web clients, because presumably they're planning a vacation or something. And porn.com should take me to an international site, with properly targeted ads and service links and all that, while porn.org should take me to some non-profit porn organization that is relevant globally. Anything else is highly improper, a scam, outright immoral.

Same of course applies to other Web content, as insignificant as it is compared to porn.

</tongueincheek>

Re:garbage domains

[houstonbofh]

What would you consider misuse of a country TLD? Domains are administrative boundaries. If you're ok with using a domain that is governed by the rules of a company or government in a foreign country, and you abide by their rules, then what is wrong with that?

Since I live in the US, not only am I OK with it, I see it as a significant benefit!

Re:garbage domains

[Anonymous Coward]

No different from .tv or any other new top level domain. It is currently possible to open up any tld you want now (.city .dog .etc) if you have around $100,000 and the capabilities to manage a registrar through Icaan.

This is good news for those who want to run the prestigious domain name, www.clownpenis.fart.

Re:garbage domains

[jalefkowit]

If you're ok with using a domain that is governed by the rules of a company or government in a foreign country, and you abide by their rules, then what is wrong with that?

Because many people who grab these domains don't understand what "their rules" are, or even that they are dealing with the rules of another country. They just think the TLD sounds cool. And the registrar (who doesn't want to lose a sale) doesn't do anything to explain it to them. Which leads to situations like this.

Re:garbage domains

[petermgreen]

Which leads to situations like this [arstechnica.com].
Or this

Re:garbage domains

[petermgreen]

country code tld's are supposed to represent sites in or at least related to that country. Misuse would be using them for sites that have nothing to do with that country.

Misusing cctlds particularly of unstable countries or ones ruled by a very different idiology to your own is a dangerous game. If the country decides they don't like your type or site or they don't like misuse in general there is little you can do about it. As someone has already pointed out registrars do nothing to explain this to their customers at the point of sale.

Let's call it scam when it is a scam

[Englabenny]

It's a scam to sell off .co domains as .com domains, and it should be outed as such by slashdot.

Re:Let's call it scam when it is a scam

[sdnoob]

agreed. just another way for godaddy to profit from the clueless or too-lazy-to-read-what-they're-doing... which is a pretty large percentage of their customer base.

Re:Let's call it scam when it is a scam

[alphatel]

It's a scam to sell off .co domains as .com domains, and it should be outed as such by slashdot.

I smell lawsuit. Unwary and dumb users expect to have their hands held in this day and age.

This is a really uninformed error by the world's largest registrar. If you don't have a big blue banner that says "This is NOT a .COM domain - .CO domains are from COlumbia!" you are automatically setting yourself up for a class-action suit which you will assuredly lose or settle.

But maybe the GoDaddy lawyers already figured out the cost of the suit, the settlement and the legal fees, and the 90% markup still leaves more on the table than an ultra-competitive .com price. In which case, we are the sheeple and will be eaten soon by the GoDragon.

A money grab

[KingSkippus]

Disclaimer: I loathe GoDaddy.com. Their commercials are downright offensive, their service is expensive crap, and I've known many people burned by them.

Having said that, I can't imagine that this is anything but a money grab by GoDaddy.com. When I read this, two thoughts came to mind.

First, they'll probably catch a lot of people who are not technically savvy enough to noticed that they're registering a .co instead of a .com. I know, how can someone be technically savvy enough to know they need a domain name and go through the process of registering it, but not know they need a .com? The easy answer is marketing goobs. Where I used to work, the marketing decided that .biz would be the next "hot" thing, and changed all of the company letter head, business cards, and ad copy to [company].biz, even though we still owned our .com name. It was a dismal failure, of course. We even got complaints from employees and customers because e-mails were bouncing due to spam systems and/or software that didn't recognize .biz as a legal address didn't work with our domain name. Eventually, the powers-that-be finally made the marketing department relent and they changed it back, but it was still an expensive, needless, unmitigated disaster.

Second, even for technically savvy people, if .co becomes a popular alternative, it's yet one more TLD that competent businesses will have to register. Any business worth its salt now has to register [company].com, [company].org, and [company].net. I run some hobby gaming sites, and even I register those three for my sites to make sure that no one tries to squat my site names. It seems painfully obvious to me that GoDaddy wants to add another TLD--and another $30 to their coffers for every domain name registered--by "legitimizing" .co domain names. If I were dumb enough to use them as a registrar, that means if I don't want someone squatting my site name, now I'll have to register [site].co as well. Worse, I really need to make double sure that I register that one because it's so easy to mistype .com as .co.

So no thank you. As far as I'm concerned, unless you run a business out of Bogotá, having a .co domain is like having a .biz domain--kind of stupid, and any non-Colombian business or organization that tries to use one instead of .com will be treated as fly-by-night by me, most likely a scammer or spammer.

Re:A money grab

[axx]

Small thing: many people don't even type in the domain name in full, with the TLD.

A *lot* of people type in “facebook” to go to facebook.com, or even “facebook login” to login to facebook, completely unaware of the magic that happens behind the scenes.
Do you remember what happened on that ReadWriteWeb article about Facebook's new login page ? The comments are unbelievable and yet. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php

Also, this is why Google knows that bit more about what sites people visit. Everytime people don't enter the TLD, their browser does a swift “I'm feeling lucky” search and takes them to the result.

So the .com vs .co problem might not be that much of an issue these days.

Re:A money grab

[houghi]

So the only reason that you are against it is so you do not need to pay more for another domain name. And yet by registering three daomain names (com, net, org) you and almost everybody else are using up those names.

I always thought these com, net, org and all others are not a good idea. The best would have been to just use the ones for each country. That would have made this site slashdot.us. "But what about international organizations like debian?" I hear you ask. Well, either take the one where the organisation is registerd, the founder is located, the cheapest one or one for each country if you want.. And While I am ranting about stuff that wil never change, it would have been better to have it named in revers e.g. us.slashdot Or even http://us/slashdot

Oh well.

Re:A money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I'm concerned, unless you run a business out of Bogotá, having a .co domain is like having a .biz domain--kind of stupid, and any non-Colombian business or organization that tries to use one instead of .com will be treated as fly-by-night by me, most likely a scammer or spammer.

But that can shift.

Look at it this way. Dot com /is/ pretty mined out, and 'co' is well established in our language as shortform for 'company'. Most people /aren't/ savvy -- they don't care much about domain name structure, they just want to get to a site. They follow links in tweets, and click first results in search engines. It's all the same to them if it's foo.com or foo.co or foo.co.uk, as long as they get to foo.

We're going to have a number of businesses and interest groups realize that, so go ahead and use a dot-co in order get the name they want to use. The numbers of those sites will only increase because the dot-com supply will only go down. Pretty soon we'll have enough good dot-co sites that you can't risk skipping such a link as a likely scammer, because it's not so likely anymore. Which is the tipping point where it doesn't matter anymore -- dot-co has gained colloquial, if not official, meaning as 'commercial'.

(The problem with 'biz' is is looks unprofessional to everyone. Dot-co only looks unprofessional to geeks who understand country codes. And we're always complaining about things that no-one understands, so nobody is going to care when we mention it.)

Re:A money grab

[SuricouRaven]

There is a .us TLD. No company wants to use it though, because it has no brand recognition at all. When people want to find a company, they type companyname.com - not companyname.us.

Here is proof, in the form of a registry desperatly trying and failing to get people to buy .us domains: http://www.neustar.us/

Re:A money grab

[hvm2hvm]

Holy shit... that's the best way to show just how sheep-like people are. Fuck, I didn't think it was that bad.

Re:A money grab

[selven]

To get to slashdot.org (I don't use facebook), I hit Ctrl+T, then the letter s, then the right arrow key, then enter. Once you've been to a site once, you barely need to think at all these days.

Re:A money grab

[metrix007]

I agree with everything you said except the ads being offensive. Using girls to sell domains may be many things, but offensive?

Re:A money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

WTFOMGBBQ!!

Man, I was aware that there are some dumb people out there, but this is a new high. Granted, there are many older people who probably have never learned what the Web is really about (URLs and stuff), but some don't look a day over 30.

So, parking pages do bring revenue after all. Go figure.

Re:A money grab

[houstonbofh]

And think of the money from all those media companies relocating to Tuvalu! The office space it a bit tight, but still... What a view!

Re:A money grab

[sznupi]

Sheep? I take it you don't utilize any thermostats in the heating of your house? Shun automatic transmission?

For that matter, why not remember and write in IP in the browser bar?

Re:A money grab

[u17]

You're right, but if the users are not to blame then it's the browser developers who made the irresponsible decision to let google decide how to resolve what users typed in the address entry field. If you release one party from blame then it's nice to point out where the blame actually lies.

Re:A money grab

[u17]

Hold on there, young man, you mean to say that you don't have to type the web site to go to a web site? I can see what you mean by Ctrl (there seems to be a key on the keyboard with that label), but how do I get a capital T without pressing Shift? (You didn't mention Shift there, so I assume I should not press it. Should I use that key I always avoid that makes me type all-capital letters?) Also, can you write this again as a numbered list, so I can ask my grandson to print it out for me and stick it on my screen? It would be most appreciated.

Ah, I love computers, they make me feel as if I were in my fifties again. You never stop learning!

Re:A money grab

[selven]

1) Send neural impulses to direct your right arm such that said arm is above the keyboard. You may, if you wish, separate your eyelids so that you might see when you are successful in this.
2) Send more neural impulses to move your thumb right over the key the light reflecting off of which forms the letters Ctrl upside down on your retina. Similarly move your pinky finger right over the key that looks like a T. Note that although pressing the key normally places a lowercase t on the screen, the key is still labeled with a capital T.
3) Send another neural impulse (if sending these impulses is taking up too much of your energy, you may wish to grab a chocolate bar) to lower your hand until the aforementioned Ctrl and T keys are both pressed.
4) Perform step 3 in reverse. You should see a new tab appear in your browser.
5) Type in the first letter of the subdomain (ie. not the TLD). If you do not know what a subdomain or a TLD is, you may google for it. If you do not know how to google, follow this guide with the URL www.google.com. You should see the rest of the subdomain appear, followed by a dot, and then the TLD. If this is the address you want, send more neural impulses in order to press the Enter key (sometimes called "enter", "Return" or "return"). If it isn't, type in more letters of the subdomain until it is.
6) Congratulations! You have reached your website! You may now get further benefit from this guide by sticking it to the part of the screen that has the annoying flash ads on it - computer help and adblock, 2 for the price of one!

Re:A money grab

[KingSkippus]

It's the manner in which the girls are selling domains.

I don't mind girls in commercials. Even sexy girls in commercials, if it's appropriate for the product. For example, beer, which is traditionally a "macho" drink, or Axe bodywash, or Victoria's Secret (who, contrary to common sense, are targeting their ads mainly at men that buy those sexy clothes for their girlfriends/wives).

GoDaddy's commercials pretty much tell me that they're positioning their services as a "macho" service, and it simply doesn't make sense. Their ads come off as, "Here's some gratuitous sex, now go pay us money." For one thing, it's demeaning to any woman who wants a domain name, and there are a lot of them out there. There's not even an alternate "Clydesdales" or "dalmation" ad campaign with a unisex appeal to it. For another, it's treating me (a guy who should be the target demographic for those ads) like I'm an idiot who is completely uninterested in the technical merits of one registrar over another; that if you show me a picture of a sexy woman, I'm such a dumb hairless ape that I'll be forced to buy their product.

I understand the adage of "sex sells." Their ads say to me, "we're really desperate to make a buck off of you," and that's not the attitude I want from a domain registration provider or web host, because it makes me think they're going to try to screw me over (which GoDaddy has indeed done to several of my friends). I would much rather have a registrar that has the attitude of, "we're really smart and really good at this stuff."

It's too bad, too. I used to have a lot of respect for Danica Patrick for the barriers she broke through in competing in an almost exclusively man's sport and becoming extremely popular and maintaining her integrity. Now, though, I think of her more as a sell-out, and I wish that a better role model had done so instead. Oh well, she's still a good race car driver, so whatever. It's just a shame that GoDaddy was there to exploit her. It's a little bit like if Rosa Parks had done a Playboy spread. Sure, she has every right to, but I just think it's a bit vulgar to exploit someone's historic significance like that.

Re:A money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also, this is why Google knows that bit more about what sites people visit. Everytime people don't enter the TLD, their browser does a swift “I'm feeling lucky” search and takes them to the result."

Actually, the reason Google knows that bit more about sites people visit, is that Firefox, Chrome and Safari all send each and every domain you visit to Google's Safebrowsing servers before they connect to it.

The exception is IE users, who send their sites to Microsoft/Bing.

Re:A money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why it takes so f'ing long for those browsers to load a page after I hit return? Lucky for me, my browser (OmniWeb, free as in beer (tho' I paid, back when they charged for a license)) just does a text insertion in the address: I type omnigroup and it turns it into www.omnigroup.com without asking Google for permission.

It'll do other, more or less arbitrary, user-defined substitutions too!

g $search_term -> http://www.google.com/search?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=$search_term

slas -> http://slashdot.org/

d $word -> http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/$word

It's sweet!

Re:A money grab

[dveditz]

Actually, the reason Google knows that bit more about sites people visit, is that Firefox, Chrome and Safari all send each and every domain you visit to Google's Safebrowsing servers before they connect to it.

That is not how SafeBrowsing works. Firefox downloads a large database of hash prefixes. If the hashes of the domain and url are not in the list you go to the site and nothing is sent to Google. If the first bit of the hash matches an entry in the list Firefox asks Google for the list of complete hashes that start with that prefix. If the site's hash matches then you're blocked, if it doesn't you're not, but nothing more is sent.

To further obfuscate things, when Firefox finds a prefix match it doesn't just ask for the hashes matching that prefix, it also asks for the hashes matching a couple other random prefixes from the list.

Google may still know all the sites you visit through cookies on google-analytics or AdSense, but they're not getting that information from SafeBrowsing.

Re:A money grab

[vegiVamp]

> browser does a swift “I'm feeling lucky” search

Umm... Maybe this changed, but the last time I checked, Firefox tries .com and a few other toplevels until one resolves.

Re:A money grab

[mujadaddy]

For that matter, why not remember and write in IP in the browser bar?

Flashbacks to SUN terminal rooms in college; having a notebook half-filled with IP addresses, passed from person to person, because only the CS grad students got printer time...good times.

GoDaddy stories on Slashdot

[Futurepower(R)]

Here are stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date, to 2010-09-11:

Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions (2005-05-04)

GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera (2005-12-08)

GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft (2006-03-23)

GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage (2006-06-17)

GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat (2006-09-16)

MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site (2007-01-26) That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names.

Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? (2007-02-03)

GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? (2007-03-11)

850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy (2007-05-29)

According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.

GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com (2008-03-12)

ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns (2008-04-08)

GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers (2008-06-29)

KnujOn Updates Top 10 Spam-Friendly Registrars List (2009-02-06, 80 comments) GoDaddy is on the list.

R.I.P. FTP (2009-07-13, 359 comments) The GoDaddy web site is extremely complicated. Quote: "In that case, why don't more people switch to administering their sites via SFTP instead of FTP? Here are the steps it took me to enable SFTP on my GoDaddy hosting account. Feel free to use this as a reference, but the obvious point is that as long as this many steps are required, it's safe to say that most users won't be switching: 1) Go to the 'Hosting' menu and pick 'My Hosting Account.' 2) Next to the name of your website, pick 'Manage Account.' This will open the Hosting Control Center. 3) In Hosting Control Center, click to expand the 'Settings' options. 4) In the 'Settings' control panel, click the 'SSH' icon. 5) You will see a page saying 'SSH is not set up', and prompting you to enter a phone number so that their automated service can call you with a PIN number. After you enter your phone number, the phone rings a second later, and you enter the PIN in a form on the GoDaddy website. 6 ) You will then see a page which says: Current Hosting Account Status: Pending Account Change -- Your request to enable SSH is being processed. This upgrade may take up to 24 hours." [Punctuation and emphasis changed for clarity.]

Registrars Still Ignoring ICANN Rules (2009-07-22, 122 comments) Quote: "GoDaddy (and their reseller arm, Wild West Domains) have a different problem: They still block transfers for 60 days after a registrant's contact update, even after the ICANN update specifically prohibited doing so. They freely admit it, too."

What registrar would you recommend?

[Futurepower(R)]

Help those of us who have domains registered with GoDaddy. What registrar would you recommend?

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had a problem with Namecheap (an Enom reseller). For weird domains, I use OVH. For really weird domains, EuroDNS.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[benji fr]

or bookmyname.com (handled by free, one big french isp) for cheap tld's and gandi.net (the first concurrent of verisign in history) for weird tld's.

for most weird tld, eurodns, yes ;)

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[cjcela]

I use dreamhost for both registrar and hosting. So far it has been excellent.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[Eggbloke]

I use 123reg for my .co.uk domain. £6 for 2 years. Never had any problems with them.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[characterZer0]

gandi.net

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[PopeRatzo]

For weird domains, I use OVH. For really weird domains, EuroDNS.

What do you mean by "weird domains"? Are you referring to something like "ifuckfishinmydreams.com" where the name itself is weird or "nationalreview.com" where all the writers are weird, or "lookbook.nu" where the idea is weird or...?

(Note: "ifuckfishinmydreams.com" is not a real website. But it you're interested in owning that domain, drop me an email. We can talk.)

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[kyrio]

Try Dynadot at www.dynadot.com

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[foniksonik]

I've been registering with 1&1 for years now. I have a free hosting account (developer preview) from 5 years ago. In any case, they charge $10 a year for .com - used to be $6 a year.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[RavenChild]

I love 1&1. I've held about 10 domains with them for the past 6 years and only had a problem once (They lost all my DNS settings+subdomains but gave me a free year, awesome service). Whenever I hear someone talking about setting up a site with GoDaddy I cringe and point them to using 1&1 if it's not too late. I don't like the price hikes they've been doing but I suppose it is understandable.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean the more unusual TLDs, like .asia, .cat, .pro, .lv, etc.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[houstonbofh]

We used namecheap for quite a while, and AWS for hosting. Just recently, we have grown to the point that safenames made a lot more sense, and still with AWS for hosting. We run our own mail, and are considering running our own dns on and internal sever, and an AWS slice for redundancy.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[lexidation]

I've used mediatemple.net for years. They're brilliant. Seem to be known mainly in design circles. Virtually problem-free but when any kind of issue does arise, the support is excellent.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[edibobb]

I like 1&1. They also have free usable DNS for domains registered elsewhere.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[RobNich]

I had about 30 domains with GoDaddy, and was very unhappy with their user interface and customer service. I wanted to be able to make mass changes to the domains, such as name servers. I tried a few different ones and settled on gkg.net. It's not the prettiest, but it's inexpensive and reliable, and the website UI is simple (no crazy Ajax, Flash interface, browser requirements, etc). For my highly important business domains, I went with DynDNS, which is slightly more expensive, but has a clean and beautiful site, offers various other services I use, and has a theoretically more reliable infrastructure, since they run DNS and registration for big names. I've been very happy with both.
Oh, and I also had a virtual server with GoDaddy, which I switched to Linode, and SSL certificates, which I switched to theSSLstore.com. Extremely happy with those too. And extremely happy to finally be rid of GoDaddy.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[n2art2]

I'd use me. funkedoodles.combr>

Just saying. My company is a resller from enom.


So basically I'm saying enom is the way to go, but if you want to buy it through a reseller, I'm there for you.

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[Anonymous Coward]

www.gratisdns.dk

Re:What registrar would you recommend?

[Matt Perry]

I've been very happy with gandi.net.

Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[netsharc]

I saw the stupid Twitter-140-character-limit-moronity-mandated URL-shortened http://flic.kr/ the other day, and I thought, the concept of ccTLDs are dead! Why not just use http://flickr/ if you're going to do that.

Yeah, the Internet is getting stupider and stupider every second...

Re:Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[leuk_he]

YOu can buyu your own tld to rule the world for about $185.000 according to this article which is really a doable amount for the internet monopolists.

Re:Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

while at it, FUCKR might be a more universal service....

Re:Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu can buyu your own tld to rule the world for about $185.000

$185? Sweet, I'll take 1,000!

Re:Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the Internet is getting stupider and stupider every second...

and amazingly enough, AOL has nothing to do with it this time....

Re:Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[lwsimon]

Damn ACs, making all Americans look stupid and unworldly ;(

Re:Fuck the ccTLDs anyway...

[leuk_he]

if you want one Tld, why sepcify in 3 decimals that you want exactly one, and then forget to specify which one? That is no way to rule the world mister Anonymous. ;)

Vote with yr wallet.

[windcask]

If you disagree with Godaddy's business practices, vote with your wallet and use other registrars and hosting services. What could possibly be gained by trying to force them back into defaulting to .com again? There's no guarantee that .com will stay the de facto standard for domain names in the future. My money is on .us domains, personally. But I don't see it happening, sadly; people would rather spend hours whining at lawmakers to litigate other tech companies like Facebook and Google into shape than actually stop using their services...

Re:Vote with yr wallet.

[shentino]

When a monopoly provides a service you desperately need, it's hard to stop them from milking you for all you're worth.

You have to maintain an internet presence these days, and failure to "keep with the times" may well jeopardize your ability to do business, hold down a job, and so on.

So you pay the piper.

Re:Vote with yr wallet.

[windcask]

I got rid of my Facebook and GMail accounts because I disagreed with their policies and their business practices. I had over 300 Facebook friends and my world hasn't come crashing down around me. People sometimes confuse what they need with what they want.

Re:Vote with yr wallet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Godaddy is not even a little bit a monopoly.

Re:Vote with yr wallet.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you disagree with Godaddy's business practices, vote with your wallet and use other registrars and hosting services.

Free Market libertarian I hope not?

While there are actions of GoDaddy that are perhaps not rising to the level of warranting regulation, there are plenty that are, so I hope you are not suggesting the typical "Let the Free Market take care of everything" mentality which overcomes certain libertarians.

That kind of position is just too extreme for me, as bad as their claims of how any government regulation is apparently the imposition of a totalitarian nanny state that will control their lives completely.

So I hope you're not suggesting that particular meme. It might get you a lot of cheers, but it won't do really work.

Re:Vote with yr wallet.

[Anonymous Coward]

No you didn't get rid of your Facebook and GMail account, you are just going siding with what's "popular" currently here on Slashdot. Either you are flatout layout, or at best, you basically had throwaway FB and GM accounts and stopped using then even more. Come back when you for example changed from GM after having been dependent on their Apps domain integration, "due to disagreeing with their business practices".

Re:Vote with yr wallet.

[shentino]

Considering how they and their competitors pull the same crap, I'd call it a de-facto cartel.

Another reason...

[ashenden]

With IDNs on the verge of becoming mainstream, there's no place for .co. While gTLDs will be aliased to many languages, ccTLDs will only be aliased to the language of their country. So, .co is stuck as ASCII or Spanish.

Public needs to learn not everyting is dot com

[h00manist]

Enough of the .com square limits already. People have learned that they don't even have to remember or take note of the full domain, they just automatically fill in .com. Sometimes I think we shouldn't even have domain names, we should all just use random-string addresses for sites. Works for phone numbers. johndoe at x9tvd2k

Re:Public needs to learn not everyting is dot com

[wlad]

Indeed. Nowadays, people just type what they want on Google. They don't type URLs anymore at all.

Regular business = scam

[h00manist]

Yes, it's a shameless scheme to grab money from people not paying attention. Like the car industry, food industry, vitamins, candy, beer, cigarettes, shoes, weapons, and just about every other business. Smoothly mislead people into spending it and thinking they are happy with what they got. *Actually* helping people, as in applying your knowledge of the subject and advising the most intelligent solutions, is not always relevant, and is frequently called stupid, nerdy, or weird. It rules our society, It's called "business" or "marketing", and it's main objective is to extract your money with whatever product excuse, produce as little as possible, hopefully you will soon send it in the local landfill.

Namecheap

[KingSkippus]

I've been using Namecheap for years, and they've been pretty awesome. They have a nice set of DNS management tools, they notify me of all important things, and as their name implies, they're inexpensive.

Another thing I like about Namecheap is that you can delegate control over your names to other people. I run a suite of hobby gaming web sites, and I've made contingency plans in case I get hit by a proverbial bus. (Or a real one.) I've given one of the other site admins permissions over the names so that if need be, he can manage them or even move them to another registrar. Obviously, I trust him implicitly, but the point is that if something happens to me, the names aren't just up for grabs once the registration expires. They may exist, but I don't know of another registrar that allows you to delegate permissions like this.

I can't speak about their technical support; I've never had to use it.

Just to prove I'm not a shill for the company (I'm only affiliated with them as being a customer), if there's one thing that's stupid about them, it's their name. I mean, "Namecheap"? Makes them sound so, I dunno, Wal-Martish, especially given what has been a good record so far with me.

Re:Namecheap

[lwsimon]

I agree - I host over 100 domains through Namecheap, and have never had any problem with them. I left GoDaddy because of their PlaySkool, Javascript intense interface, long before I had enough domains to be worried about the privacy and security implications.

I also like money. A lot. In that line, here's an affiliate link to Namecheap that might make me some :)

Re:Namecheap

[n2art2]

namecheap doesn't offer all of those nice services. They are a reseller, and enom actually provides that service to all of their resellers. A very handy ability to resell.

Re:Namecheap

[n2art2]

You would make more money, if you just went to enom and got your own reseller account to manage all of your domains.

That's what I did, and now my company provides and sells domains to all of our website design customers as a part of our packages.

Why go to a secondary reseller, when you can become one yourself and take out a middle man.

Re:Namecheap

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to sounding wal-martish, their site looks it too. Thankfully the customer interface is only slightly stupid compared to the rest of the site.

I've been using Namecheap for many, many years (at least 8). They're good stuff.

Re:Namecheap

[EvilIdler]

I can speak for NameCheap's technical support. They are quick and helpful. I only have certificates with them, but it's an ever-growing number :)

I have a reseller account with some other company for domains, which is tens of cents cheaper per domain (special offers not included). The only difference between going through NameCheap and reseller accounts is that the latter normally requires a little deposit. If they need no deposit, they're usually slightly more expensive. For just a few domains I'd go with NameCheap. If you hoard domains reseller accounts are for you.

Re:Namecheap

[TechnoGrl]

I can second the Namecheap recommendation. I moved my registration and hosting/email of my dozen domains from Godaddy to Namecheap last year and have been very satisfied.

Re:Namecheap

[dargaud]

I second the namecheap recommendation as a lowly user. I've had to deal with registrations from other registrars, and each time my main thought was: "I wish this had been done on namecheap, it would have been easier".

Re:Namecheap

[lwsimon]

I'll look into this - thanks :)

I don't do much web development these days, but this is still worth checking into.

.us

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't .us used more? (And its variants like perhaps co.us.)

Aren't you Americans patriotic? ;)

People may not be paying

[Sycraft-fu]

The squatters may just think people will pay. Remember that for something like this to happen there doesn't have to be an actual worthwhile market, just the perception of one. You get all kinds of dumb, greedy, people who get in to shit.

A great example is back in the day when eBay was young and some domain squatters decided to buy up domains they thought might be worthwhile and try to sell them. So the funniest one I came across was a guy who had registered generalmills.cc and wanted to sell it for $10,000,000. That's right, ten million dollars. His sales pitch was you could buy it and then "Make them pay whatever you liked for the rights." Of course General Mills happily owned generalmills.com at the time and didn't seem to have an interest in others. What's more, a company can nab a domain name that is their trademark if they wish (these days through ICANN, back then through the courts). I e-mailed him calling him an idiot more or less and got one of the most caustic, hate filled responses defending his business claiming he made millions "regularly" on sales. I pointed out to him that he had no sales on eBay thus far, and got more hate in response.

It was quite clear that he though he'd got a brilliant scam, which was successful only in his own mind. He was just waiting for his big payday... Which of course never came.

NearlyFreeSpeech

[Chemisor]

www.nearlyfreespeech.net is the best registrar and webhost anywhere. Rock bottom prices, clean website, and absolutely no bullshit. Just sayin' as a satisfied customer for three years.

.co seems better than .ly

[t2t10]

I doubt Colombia has serious qualms about drugs, sex, or hookers. As long as you don't criticize their drug cartels, your domain is probably safe.

Re:.co seems better than .ly

[Coren22]

Um, you don't know much about Colombia then. They have made significant advances in fighting the drug cartels. Maybe you are thinking about Mexico?

Re:.co seems better than .ly

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you are humor impaired?

Re:.co seems better than .ly

[Coren22]

Why yes, yes I am.

"Domaining" may be on the way out.

[Animats]

With the October 27th change to Google web search, "domaining" may be on the way out.

Google made huge changes when they merged "Google Places" (which is really Google business search") results into their main web search results. Search for DVD player. There are almost no "organic search results" shown. At the top, there's "Related searches for dvd player - Brands, Stores, Types". There are two "organic" results from Amazon and Best Buy, both Google advertisers. Then a big block of "shopping results" A right side column of ads.

And that's a non-local search. On searches which imply some location ("london hotels" is a good test case), Google displays a map. For a few days, they displayed a big map in the main search area; today it's on the right, above the ads. Between the big ad block at the top, the map at the right, the ads below the the map, and the links in the main search area to the map, only a few organic results are squeezed in.

Google's organic search isn't any better than it used to be at filtering out the bottom-feeders. Down below the fold on "dvd player" search, there's still a result from "bestsoftware4download" (which tries a drive-by install of some .exe). In the "london hotels" search, there are a few junk entries. Most of the stuff visible on the first screen isn't organic search results, though. This makes "domaining" futile.

Google is still fooling around with their layout after their big change, and it hasn't settled yet. (Also, Google's layout changes if you're logged into Google and allow "personalization". The results mentioned above are not "personalized".) The trend, though, is clear. The primary results for a search with commercial intent now come from Google advertisers. Google is pushing advertisers to buy ads directly from Google, not from the "bottom feeders".

So buying up large numbers of ".co" domains may be futile. I expect we'll see many junk domains in ".com" expiring, with nobody picking them up.

NameSilo

[caffeinejolt]

NameSilo - I would highly recommend them

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what's so bad about this. There are so many country domains sold for other purposes. .TV, .LA, .NU, .LY, etc. I see them all over the place. Many registrars even sell stuff like .us.com, .uk.com, etc. Everyone is just looking for more namespace to sell. .CO is not such a bad choice.

If you don't like this, then complain to ICANN and have them make it easier to add new commercial TLD's.

ccTLDs are Not governed by ICANN Policies...

[Ron Bennett]

Many people, are not aware that country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) are NOT governed by ICANN policies.

ccTLDs are a whole different breed with their own unique rules and policies. The ccTLD delegated country, which in the case of .CO is the country of Columbia, has total control - the registrant has little to no recourse; ICANN likely can't help.

Most .CO registrants don't fully realize the risks with the biggest ones being:

* The country of Columbia could change policy at any time and take away many domains - it's happened many time before in numerous ccTLDs, including with .TM, such as Sex.TM, and even with .US as in the case of FuckCensorship.US that was retroactively deleted - google for more details.

* Can charge any price they want - so that .CO domain one registers for $29.95 today at GoDaddy could potentially cost far more in the future to renew; no rate caps nor restrictions on variable pricing - .CO can raise prices to whatever it wants anytime for all or selectively (ie. own a real nice .CO and you could be looking at a huge renewal bill; not unheard of either - read up on .TV variable pricing practices).

Bottom line is ccTLDs (.CO, .TV, .US, etc) are not the same as gTLDs (.COM, .NET, .ORG, etc). Buyer beware!

Ron

Not dissimilar to CentralNic's "country" .com/.co

[rklrkl]

15 years ago, CentralNic pulled a similar stunt with the .com domains - they went around and registered domains like uk.com, us.com, cn.com and ru.com and then brazenly sold subdomains off of those as if they were "top-level domains", completely with hefty charges (32.50 GBP per year for something.uk.com for example).

It ties in with this story too, because CentralNic have indeed registered uk.co and us.co as well, so I wonder when they'll try to "persuade" the publc that something.uk.co is a legit top-level domain (clue stick: like something.uk.com, it isn't).

Go to flat namespace

[emt377]

Why do we even have root domains? Why not simply partition load by say the last few letters of the domain name. Reserve trademarks, proper names, and other forms of identity to their rightful owners - this way say a city can register a "root" domain and sell subdomains. Or a country. Or a DNS hotel like GoDaddy. Small organizations can register with whoever they wish as a subdomain, or run their own top level if they wish. Charge a flat fee per domain to recover load costs.

And get rid of the annoying certificate system. These days everyone has account management; when I register for an account my browser should supply a random secret; when I login the browser, in addition to credentials, supplies a random number; in the response to the login the site signs the random secret using a second random number and the secret I provided at registration and returns this random number and its signed version in the reply; the browser then validates that I signed into the site I actually registered with. This could ALL be done transparently under the hood and the user would only be notified on mismatch. Secrets could be stolen, but so can login credentials and certificates, and DNS can be hijacked. Such a simple but effective system would get rid of the need for certificate authorities and the entire expensive trust chain. No need to trust anyone other than yourself! And, finally, when a bank or other party wants to send me email they can SIGN IT using the secret I supplied when I registered to prove their authenticity.

And speaking of DNS, fix it so we look up services such as "give me a list of endpoints for the http service of slashdot". Identify the endpoint by address:port AND PROTOCOL/FAMILY. This way it could return phone numbers, snail mail, TCP listeners, or what have you and it's up to the connecting side to find the one best suited. By extension this would permit lookups like "give me a list of services for slashdot". This would greatly simplify many service deployments!

.co, .ws

[edibobb]

I hope this goes the way of the multi-level-marketing strategy (aka pyramid scheme) of .ws. The .ws, or "web site" domains (aka Western Samoa) were going to replace .com sites some time ago.

Re:Not dissimilar to CentralNic's "country" .com/.

[Lehk228]

it will also be a good scam against those trying to avoid squatters, own a .co.uk? better buy up the .uk.co as well, especially if you are a bank or other business that would be a likely target of fraud.

namen

[Mana Mana]

Puleese, this shiz wont last. Anyone remember sitename.UK.CO

???

Last year I tried to find _at least_ one for fun. All gone, UKulele all gone.

Go Daddy gold digging

[lsatenstein]

When we could not choose our *.com domain, we chose *.biz. About 100 seconds after completing registration, I got marketing phone calls from GD inviting me to purchase additional names to a) protect our name and b) and insurance. The additional proposed costs exceeded the initial payment by quite a bit.

.co for phishing

[RingDev]

It's pretty easy to pick out the "yourbank.leethaxors.com" and "batt13.net.com" spam. But with an appropriately formatted email, a link to "slashdot.co" might actually get some folks to click the link and log in to the phishing site.

-Rick