Comment by biot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biot | Hacker News Reader

So what happens if you search for a domain name on domai.nr and, three days later, you find it has been registered through domai.nr and is available on NameLayer which is domai.nr's premium domain selling service? Would you chalk it up to coincidence, especially if it's a decent name? Or will you write another blog post telling people to never use domai.nr ever again?

GoDaddy was one of the first ones to call attention to domain tasting, later referring to it as domain kiting:

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/pdf/100804_letter_iyd.pdf

http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitorin...

If I, as an anonymous user, search for any of my domains on GoDaddy, I find that they'll offer to let me use their domain buy service to backorder them too, even for domains I've had since the 90's. Without any further evidence, it's impossible to tell whether you actually have a legitimate case (though a sample size of one is hardly statistically significant) or if you simply don't understand how domain registrations work.

I'd say that it would be quite the coincidence if this obscure and very specific domain was registered within 24hrs by GoDaddy, completely by chance.

It's most of the time coincidence. Especially with GoDaddy being the largest registrar. Millions of customers and two people had the same idea.

Your blog post says that it was registered through GoDaddy. That's not surprising as (last I checked) they are the largest registrar and of the millions of domain names registered a month, it's altogether likely that your domain name was one of the several hundred thousand that were registered through GoDaddy in that three day period.

However, you now claim it was registered by GoDaddy, not through GoDaddy? Your lack of precision in your terminology and the fact that you don't reveal the domain name for anyone to verify isn't helping your case.

But there are tens of thousands of people doing this sort of idle search, then later register attempt, all the time.

Even incredibly unlikely coincidences will turn up occasionally (and then trigger blog speculation). Without more evidence, coincidence is still a highly likely explanation here.

(I'm one of Domainr's co-founders, and for the record, we absolutely do not, and will never, do anything ethically ambiguous like front-running.)

We hear of similar issues from time to time, and each time we've investigated, they've ended up being coincidental. The thing to do is look at whois and see when the domain was originally registered — perhaps GD is showing domains with varying "already-registered" states in their search results:

http://domaininfo.buydomains.com/domain-name-basics/domain-n...

Another (creepy, imho) thing to keep in mind is that Verisign allegedly logs and resells aggregate data from unresolved DNS requests:

http://www.domainnamenews.com/editorial/verisign-to-profit-f...

(Domainr uses the DNS to check for availability — it's hella fast, and sufficiently accurate to provide a good user experience.)

He did not say it was available on Godaddy's auction service. He said Godaddy offered to help him send an offer to the person who purchased it.

That's not the same thing at all.

This guy does not have a complaint at all. He does not have a right to every domain he searches for but refuses to buy.

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