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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

"There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage."

This is exactly why the .com domain wins. They do not have this attitude. Their attitude is to be in it to win it and do what it necessary to be successful. That's the .com signal.

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It also depends on your market.

If ProductHunt disappeared tomorrow, I'd be sad, but that's it.

Stripe and Parse on the other hand both needed to signal strength to their customers from day one. There are many customers that would not entrust their payment details with getstripe.ly.

I've never really thought about it until now but I don't think I'd even pay for a service on .ly et al even if it was using stripe/PayPal

Maybe I'm just getting old but the .com wins it for me, at an absolute push for online services I'll trust a .net

What about https:\\ though?

It's trivial to get a cert for HTTPS. That doesn't tell me if the people behind the site are trustworthy, security conscious or going to be around in a year's time

I know that the dotcom doesn't do that either, it's not a rational thing - just a thing

.ly is particularly bad because Lybia's maintenance is a real risk.

Not everybody finances a startup with a mountain of cash. If you're funding your business with your life savings and credit cards, it's difficult to place a premium on a domain name while contemplating how long you can pay your mortgage and put food on the table.

Also, blind optimism is not required for success. And no domain name is an antidote for a shitty idea that nobody cares about.

You are right about the chitty idea, but decent .com names are dropped every day. (You need to scout for names every day though, but will become a nasty habit in no time.) I have found that people, outside of tech, will remember weird, odd .com domains. I got people to remember physibles(and how to spell it.), and these were senior citizens. (I guarantee these people have never been on the mother site either!)

I tried a different domain with a .io domain; and it just wasen't worth it the effort.(they knew about .net. ,org, but that's it.). There's almost a anger that comes up when a domain ext. gets to specific, like .photography?

You basically make the case for .com. It signals funding and optimism (whether you wrongly think it's bind or not).

Maybe that was 2 years ago. Most people google the product/service nowadays, so if you have a better product/service, your company might be on top of some .com domain doing the same thing. I think that the .com fever is over.

It has nothing to do with how you find the website.

Most people don't know what .com is. So sure if you are talking about a bunch of VCs your might be right but for most people it doesn't have that value.

How do you explain that pretty much every very large successful company has its straightforward .com? And why do you not place any significance in that?

It's .com for historical reasons. Today most startups wont be able to afford a proper .com name, but as they grow more and more successful they will.

So PG is right that a .com is important but not for the reasons he seem to indicate.

That you can acquire a proper .com is a manifestation of your success it is not the base of your success. And that is how his essay comes of at least to me and many others.

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