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Comment by deftnerd | Hacker News Reader

I've seen several "new TLD's" do this pricing scheme. Typically they come up with some kind of pricing algorithm for "premium" domains by seeing if the word is in the dictionary and how often it's used in everyday language.

Things like "business.blog" will fetch a price that'll likely be in the 4 or 5 figures a year for the registrant.

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This makes sense to me. Some domain names are worth more than others. gaming.blog will probably have a lot of value, while ilikegrasshoppers.blog is not worth very much. I see no reason why these things should be assigned the same arbitrary value when it is clear their values are not equal.

> gaming.blog will probably have a lot of value

I'm not sure about that; many everyday users I know are now wary of 'general' domain names and see them as spammy or suspicious.

In the UK B&Q has to remind us that diy.com is actually their retail website and not some ad-ridden "answer aggregator"

Elan is a credit card provider in the US, and the domain name for their web panel is "myaccountaccess.com". This is not as cool as they think.

Aside from download.com and weather.com, I can't think of too many generic domain names that have picked up any traction. They actually come off as sketchy to me and many seem to be held by speculators looking to sell. I don't see the value.

pizza.com and sex.com. Two things the human race cares a lot about.

Pizza.com was sold for millions http://www.cnet.com/news/pizza-com-domain-name-fetches-milli...

So was sex.com http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-most-expensive-domain-...

He wasn't commenting on the price. He was commenting on the actual traction that the website's have generated.

As in, how many 'generic' domains are actually being used to their potential?

Has anyone ever ordered from Pizza.com? (Or manually put that in their address bar other than right now?). I think you'd be surprised how low that number is.

That's a good point. I'd guess that sex.com is doing fine but pizza.com website seems like one of those ad only squatter domains. I googled Pizza and they were nowhere to be found in the search results. I wonder how they're doing.

I use domain.com regularly.

That's fucked up. At least with normal domains you pay 10$/year after buying it for whatever amount.

This just screams for these new TLD buyers to extort customers. Imagine if that happened with .com. Nice domain you have there, Facebook. What is facebook.com worth to you on a yearly basis?

Don't buy domains whose TLDs are run by private corporations.

I hate that this is even allowed by ICANN rules.

Why, out of curiosity? Is first-come-first-served really any better?

Yeah. One you pay a million bucks for a domain, it's around 10/year after that.

At least it's fair. Part of what makes the Internet amazing is the typical cliche that anyone can come out of nowhere to disrupt huge business. This seems like a slippery slope where you have to be able to pay to play.

I kind of disagree, since I am young I would never have the change to register a nice, generic domain name.

I'm in my late 20's and I've never had that opportunity myself either; not with the original TLD's at least.

However, with these new TLD's coming out, you do have that chance, as long as the pricing is fair. If .blog is announced and it's $10 per domain, you have the same chance anyone else does to snag "gaming.blog". However, if that domain is considered "premium" and costs $10,000 to register, well... that really limits potential buyers to those that have deep enough pockets to afford it.

No - which I didn't proclaim it is. But it seems somehow a bit fairer thant prime-pricing.

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