The .blog Bait and Switch

You can register your new gTLD for anywhere between $1 and $100, depending on what I suppose they expect their target demographic to be willing to pay. Dot horse is more expensive than dot webcam, for instance, and I imagine dot lawyer is more expensive than dot lol.

However, if your domain name uses a word or phrase that happens to be in their "premium domain" dictionary, then they'll charge an elevated price based on heuristics similar to what yesteryear's domain squatters used. Some simple and concise domains can run hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  cheap.horse is $25/yr
  tiny.horse is $100/yr
  internet.horse is $1000/yr
  free.horse is "ask us"

I wonder what will happen when some of these companies go under because they can no longer afford to pay off their debts? Will those that registered domain names lose them outright? Can someone else buy the gTLD and take them all over?

-----------------

Hello,

You are getting this email because you have performed a pre-order with your handle {redacted} for the domain name {redacted}.

Unfortunately, this order is currently in error, because the domain name in question has been defined as Premium by the registry. This decision is of course beyond our control and frequently corresponds to a list of common and/or connotative words that allow registered to apply special rates to them.

This means that in your case, we have placed the order in error, because the price that you initially paid is no longer the price that the registry is charging for it.

If you would like to know the price, in order to eventually purchase it, then reply to this email, so that our support team can obtain that for you from the registry.

As long as you are considering this, do not cancel your order, since this will cause you to lose your place in the waiting list.

If, however, you no longer wish to register the domain, you can cancel it from the link provided below, and your prepaid account will be refunded for the order:

Why is a very specific spelling (note the lack of "e") of a not terribly common name so expensive? No clue, but I'm guessing the same forces are at work (i.e., $$$).

I suspect that a lot of them are just hoping that enough large companies buy up kfc.blog, walmart.porn, etc to make a return on investment. Fleecing people who actually want the domains is just icing on the cake.

I am somewhat of a hypocrite, I run my blog off https://sheep.horse/, but only because I thought that the .horse TLD was silly enough to be worth supporting.

I worked briefly at a registry - it is money for jam.

I don't know if the DNS protocol and all the related ones are fundamentally broken or need fixing, but it seems to me the problem is ICANN and the web that spreads out from under it.

Why can't we just create an alternate ... distributed naming system, except without the rent-seeking/government ownership attached? I mean, this focus on how important the last bit is is ridiculous, the namespace doesn't have to be artificially restricted, beyond what the protocol might require.

I guess I have a simplistic view and probably lack a bit of history, and there must be something preventing it. Do the top-level servers collude, and help to create something like ICANN, or was it taken out of people's hands etc?

When it finally came out, I eagerly went to my favourite registrar to try and buy it, and found that it's listed at over £1000. It's not a particularly common name either. Out of interest, I tried a few other surnames off the top of my head, and it seems that pretty much any domain that could be somebody's surname has been bumped up massively.

Of course, they have every right to do that, but the people buying these domains are individuals - very few of these domains are ever going to have a business use. To me, it looks like they've done nothing more than price themselves out of the whole point of their TLD.

Instead, I'm going to wait out the expiry of the .com, which isn't being squatted as such, but it is owned by a company for a single software product of theirs which looks like it was written in the 90s and requires you to send a cheque if you want to buy it. The last update was helpfully reminding visitors that the app wouldn't be compatible with the upcoming OS X Lion. One day, they'll stop renewing that domain...my time will come.

There are some proposed safeguards built into the rules to prevent this meltdown caused by failing registries. But looking at how the industry currently behaves I don't think the will to stand to the rules and grab as much money as they can and leave the sinking ship asap.

There was that whole pre-registration BS but it is so convoluted and expensive I just waited till it went live. It did, and when I checked on my last name, it was set at $1200/year for a normally $30/year domain. This was when I was introduced to the idea of reserved domains in this new TLD system.

So I emailed them and put forth my argument, that this TLD in particular is a bit unfair, considering I don't control what name I'm born with. I didn't think it would have any impact, because $$$.

One day I got an email and they offered me to buy it for a one-time price of $1200 and then the renewal would be set at $30. I said no. There are so many TLDs now that it's easy to get a common-word, easy-to-say one.

If I register a .de domain today I am pretty sure that it will last a long time. But some of the new ones have a pretty sketchy vibe to it and I am not sure if I'd trust them enough to build a business on top of a .fancy domain

https://knockknockwhoisthere.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dot...

"We are not bound to select a winner among RFP respondents and may hold the Domain Name for future allocation."

"We may activate and allocate to ourselves or third parties certain Domain Names (plus their IDN variants, where applicable) deemed necessary for the operation or the promotion of TLD."

"the Registry makes no guarantees or warranties as to whether any applicant will be successful in registering any Registry Domain Name."

The .io NIC web interface is really horrible and I ended up in an inconsistent state after making the "horrible" mistake of clicking the back button. Even though my Paypal account got charged, I received an email confirming I was the owner of the domain, and so on, I couldn't access my account.

Next step I took was contacting them. I got ignored and after 7 days later they made a transaction reversal on Paypal and I never heard a word back from them, even though I have tried to contact.

Some time later they made the o1.io domain a reserved one and so if I wanted it now I would have to pay thousands. What a shame.

The phone book is rather simple. Your individual given name or your business dba name is the dictionary key, and the phone number is the dictionary value. Your dictionary entry is automatically included, unless you paid to be "unlisted". That would keep your phone service provider from printing your name-number pair in their phone books.

This approach is still viable. Every state has a database of corporate names and dba registrations. The secretary of state for Illinois, as an example, could make aaa-plumbing.corp.il.us resolve to the server address for "AAA Plumbing, Inc.", if that business chose to disclose it, or to a landing page otherwise. Likewise, zzz-towing.llc.il.us could resolve to the address for "ZZZ Towing, LLC".

The US Patent and Trademark Office could do the same. Let lego.028.tm.us (and lego.009.tm.us, lego.041.tm.us, etc.) resolve to LEGO Juris A/S Corp's servers, so you can see a site about plastic building blocks, and let lego.005.tm.us resolve to American Lego Group Inc's server, so you can see a site about soy protein supplements.

If you are Foobar LLC, you really shouldn't have to register "foobar.com" and "foobar.net" and "foobar.cc" and "foobar.co.uk" and "foobar.biz" and "foobar.info" and "foobar.sucks" and "foobar.pooky" and "foobar.booger". It isn't really elucidative, and does not help discoverability to have so many TLDs. The problem is that all the simple names have been mined out of the original TLDs, and there is no mechanism to resolve name collisions between Foobar LLC out of the US and Foobar GmbH in Germany. Whoever grabs "foobar.com" first gets to keep it, and the other is stuck trying to make some DNS entry that somehow relates to the company name.

Adding a bunch of niche TLDs helps a bit, but not if the registrar can charge $1k/year for names. That's just ridiculous. You're not going to end up with all the Johns on the Internet getting their own john.something domain name that way. You just let the richest John on the Internet to have all the john.anything domain names.

https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=chris.blog

Maybe the domain got bought during the sunrise period by a copyright holder!?

https://my.blog/launch-plan/

I had something like this happened before with WordPress.com - I have nikolay.wordpress.com, and then an employee took it way from me. After making a long discussion on TechChrunch about it, the employee decided to give it back to me.

So, my point is, there's nothing new under the sun here - obviously Matt is the old Matt having double standards, and not knowing what's acceptable and what is not in the digital world.

Also, he's going against his investor's interested, because some of these domains could've brought in millions of dollars, but he wants to do his buddies favors, and not honor what was promised.

Edit: Maybe if there are several of us, we should try to see if we can have a class action lawsuit. Our hundreds of dollars were used by the Automattic for 3 months, that's a lot of money collectively, and they should not get away - there was no mentioning of any Founders when they took our money!

The title of this article was a bait & switch.

I agree with the OP. They seems to gather the popularity info by accepting pre-register requests.

Is there any policy to ban this behavior? Shouldn't the TLD be publicly opened?

The twist in this case? The domain I applied for is now pointing directly towards WordPress.com. So get.blog, owned by parent company Automattic, took the domain which had been made available for the public, and gave it to WordPress.com. I wonder what ICANN will have to say?

SHADY AF.

While it's far less-convenient for global companies and "ignoring borders", it decentralizes the system. Compartmentalizing failure and allowing some kinds of competition.