Is this a common thing, where registrars (like Google) basically are now acting like squatters for domains that are actually open?
Yes, but it's kind of surprising to see Google doing it. I'm a bit shocked TBH. I always considered Charleston Road Registry (Google) to be "safe" in the context of not screwing users, but I guess that was a mistake.
Most of the ngTLD registries are run by business and finance people, not product people. IMO the only thing they understand is price discrimination. They're run by the kind of people that would see a dollar bill blowing in the wind and chase it off a cliff.
The biggest thing I don't want when registering a domain or managing a brand is uncertainty. However, the registries and ICANN have proven via their actions that registrants are secondary to the registries. The registries can, have, and will change pricing on existing registrants. ICANN allows it as long as it's a uniform pricing change (ie: everyone gets screwed equally).
Out of the original CNOBI (com, net, org, biz, info) domains I think .com and .net are the only ones with price controls left. I'm sure there will be effort to remove those in a short sighted money grab.
As-is, the only safe TLD is .com. It's the only one with enough registrants to resist getting screwed. All of the new TLDs are a huge risk because you have almost no rights as a registrant.
It's sad too. I think the new TLDs could be awesome for the internet if the registries were run by product people who understood that registrants need stability and long term guarantees. If anything they should be lobbying ICANN for price controls because it makes their product better for the customer. I'm sure Ethos Capital will get right on that [1]. Lol.
> In January 2021, Ethos Capital acquired Donuts after their failed bid to gain control over the .org internet domain.
I think Donuts is by far the largest TLD owner, so that gives an idea of how trustworthy the whole industry is IMO.
Even after ethos was ran out of town by the California AG?
Arguably, the .org registrants are better connected than the typical .com registrants.
It’s a business, nothing new under the sun.
Yes I understand that it's likely that squatters would've taken this instead. But instead of coming up with a solution for that (like, if you don't use it for X amount of time, then it's lost), they instead decided "why don't we just take that money"
Okay, now come up with a definition of "use" that effectively eliminates squatting-for-profit that doesn't also eliminate legitimate uses for having multiple domains that don't look like they're "being used"
The squatters are actually better in some cases. If they're selling a non-premium domain that you can renew cheaply, the up front price can be more tolerable than the long term cost of a premium domain.
It looks like the premium domains for .zip are about $550 USD on Porkbun. I'd way rather pay $5k up front for a .com compared to $5.5k over 10 years for a .zip.