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The Man Squatting On Millions of Dollars Worth of Domain Names

Posted by timothy on from the your-name-here dept.

Jason Koebler writes For the last 21 years, Gary Millin and his colleagues at World Accelerator have been slowly accumulating a veritable treasure trove of seemingly premium generic domain names. For instance, Millin owns, has sold, or has bartered away world.com, usa.com, doctor.com, lawyer.com, comic.com, email.com, cyberservices.com, and more than 1,000 other domain names that can be yours (including yours.com, which he owns), as long as you've got the startup idea to back it up. Millin doesn't sell domain names anymore, instead, he trades them to startups in exchange for a stake in the company.

3 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:IOW, he's a rentseeker. by St.Creed · · Score: 4, Informative

    He's not an investor - he's a squatter who just claimed a generic name before anyone else needed it. He doesn't need it either, he just holds it ransom.

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    Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  2. Re: should be illegal by namgge · · Score: 3, Informative

    In my experience, you can safely ignore this scam. I've had several of these, have ignored them, and the domains in question were still available for anyone to register months later. Namgge

  3. Re:IOW, he's a rentseeker. by rs79 · · Score: 1, Informative

    We've been through this for 20+ years. The counterargument is people can use these name now that otherwise wouldn't be able to. Long term it's a wash.

    I met Gary 20 years go, he's a decent guy. Although I haven't talked to him in over a decade he was always a man of his word.

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    Need Mercedes parts ?