Slashdot Mirror
The Man Squatting On Millions of Dollars Worth of Domain Names
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.
What has he created? What has his labor produced? Or is he just a landlord?
I really hope that all the new TLDs will end this domain squatting pest and diminish domain names. Squatters add nothing of value. Only transaction costs to online businesses.
1) Generate startup
2) Obtain domain name for stake in startup
3) Declare bankruptcy
4) Buy substantially all assets (including domain name) of startup.
5) Repeat
aka the troll on the bridge, whenever a big new industry or platform comes into existence. Someone who's figured out how to seize ownership of an essential piece of the supply chain and then make a mint charging rents, or by selling all or parts of it for 100x what he paid.
Congrat Mr. Millin on being "that guy".
A start-up called "usa.com"? It must be for lobbyists: the country is for sale.
Table-ized A.I.
Insurance.com went with some other minor assets for over $35 million in 2010.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It should be illegal just like huge domains. If your not using it and don't have a company related you shouldn't be able to own it. They buy them for prices ranging from 99 cents to 7 dollars and then ask hundreds to hundreds of thousands for them Thankfully you can at least get it if you hold the trademark. They held one of my friends domains hostage, the hit counter showed 3 visits since they bought it and are asking 3 grand cuz its his companies name. Records show they bought it for 99 cents, he's currently in the trademark process.
Guy who gives away free stuff gets angry when guy taking free stuff turns around and sells it. News at 11. We will also interview guy who didn't get any of the free stuff to begin with and feels like he's entitled to some now that he understands there is money to be made.
They held one of my friends domains hostage, the hit counter showed 3 visits since they bought it and are asking 3 grand cuz its his companies name. Records show they bought it for 99 cents, he's currently in the trademark process.
How did they buy it if it was already registered to your friend?
Or did you mean it wasn't actually 'his', but a domain he wanted?
That seems wildly unenforceable.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
That seems wildly unenforceable.
Make the domains per-snailmail-address, and mail a code necessary for use of the domain to whoever registers it. Yeah, ugh. Snail mail. But anyway. At least it makes it more of a PITA to squat, though not impossible.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Having a bunch of domain names is no sign of "investment" or "savvy" -- it's having a few bucks at the right time.
Not sure if these people have to pay the wholesale renewal price of $15 or not, but it seems to me that you shouldn't be able to squat on names of websites not in use, or vaguely sounding like a website you have in use. I can understand "donaldtrumpbadhair" as a domain Donald Trump might reserve.
I predict we will soon have intelligent agents who take care of our internet connections, and the naming will be moot for all but the most visible web domains. Then the battle will be over the "processing of content" as the agents digest information and present it to the user. We can see this in the case of SIRI on the iOS platform -- it can get you right to your target without much of a glance at all the intervening marketing. The internet will become more and more of a service platform -- just as software is becoming.
Then someone is going to patent the patterns of connections. Maybe we'll have pattern squatters.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Being in the first 4-5 entries on a google search is worth a lot of money. I didn't think anyone looks at domain names anymore. We may as well just be using IP addresses at this point.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
just sayin
One way to check such abuses would be to mandate that only the registrars can sell domain names. An individual can buy as many domains as he pleases but would not be permitted to legally resell them. An individual could divest himself of domain names only through expiration or a direct return to the registrar.
If a company called Acme Foods desired the domain acmefoods.com but the domain was already held then that company would be forever out of luck unless the holder allowed the domain to expire or returned it to the registrar. But no direct sale between the holder and Acme Foods would be legally permitted.
I can't see how this scheme would fail. Maybe others have more devious vision than I.
Are you trying to imply he's doing anything other then rent seeking? If you are you're doing a terrible job at it. How much money is this guy putting up? If the answer isn't "enough to buy his share of partial ownership" then the only thing he brings are the domains he's squatting on. To wit: rent seeking.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You want that beach front property but can't afford the section with the view to build on.
The land owner says "I'll lease you the land if I get to use the property on the weekends you aren't using it".
What's not to like?
What this guy is offering seems like a fairly good idea and not a bad deal to me, so why all the hate?
It's just a new spin on raising VC or Angel money.
So taking money is ok but not renting a domain name? That doesn't make sense.
The new TLD's aren't yet bestowing the branding power that the good old .com does.
However, since the advent of Apps, domain names have lost a lot of ground to App Store ranking and App marketing.
Google stopped first page ranking of the domain name for the keyword a few years ago so it does not convey automatic organic search dominance either.
I hope anyone getting involved with these guys realises these points when they are negotiating away a stake in their startup.
So when I want to launch a new domain name, I have to wait for something to come in the mail? Are you fucking serious?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
The Man Squatting On Millions of Dollars
Sounds like the title of this year's Turner Prize winner. Bloody modern art.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So when I want to launch a new domain name, I have to wait for something to come in the mail? Are you fucking serious?
Only the first time. After that, you have a code associated with your address, and any additional domain registrations can be done with that code. When you compare it to having to wait possibly days for a domain squatter to get back to you and then having them make an insulting offer of thousands of dollars for a domain they've literally been sitting on for years and thus it's been costing them money and earning them nothing it seems positively efficient. It also gets out of having to positively confirm your identity, all you need is a mailing address and you only need to use it once. It also helps satisfy the legal requirement to have a valid identity associated with the domain registration.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You want the government to tax perceived values of unused domains? Or limit how long a domain can go "unused"? Or limit how many someone can own? There are many companies who have "prime" domains. The point here is this company is trading the domain name for a cut in the business. What are some big web names out there... google. Bing. Yahoo. Slickdeals. Woot. Autotrader. Craigslist. Facebook. Twitter. Ebay. Aside from weather.com... off the top of my head i can not really think of some site with a simple name that is a "goto". And you can get weather hundreds of other places. Valuing a domain name is not the same as actual land. Maybe this is just called squatting because nobody wants to buy these for millions. I bet someone actually offers him millions he would take it. Better to spend your advertising budget on plong.com selling perfume than giving a cut of your business to this guy or giving him millions for it. I think everyone is just pissed off they did not register these names first...
What makes him any different from the people who buy up housing for cheap, pay off politicians and put 50 people into 5 rooms? He is a slumlord, pure and simple.
HE'S the guy that puts up all those web sites that have nothing on them except links that are designed to get unsuspecting people to click on them, for the ad revenue.
That doesn't really help things. It's not hard to lie about that,or find people willing to whore out their home address for a fraction of what you'll save from spreading out the addresses between properties.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Domain grabbing should be illegal
If the rent-seeker doesn't use it, they lose it.
but I'm not sure it's a morally/ethically/socially good model.
There needs to be a sufficient cost on domains (something like $100/year) to ensure that they are being used for a legitimate reason. I have no problem with squatters if they are willing to pay into the system; however, they are currently paying almost nothing and just blindly sweeping up every available domain to create a no-value-added business.