The case for shorter .com domains | Hacker News Reader

The case for shorter .com domains

nklswbr.com

11 pointsnklswbr20 comments

Well, yeah, obviously. Where you get the millions of dollars to buy those short names isn't so obvious, though.

Registrars [like Namecheap] label short, original, distinctive domains [like the one you spent weeks, months brainstorming] as "premium" right at the moment of registration, even if they were available only days or weeks prior. Once these domains are marked as premium, they are sold at exorbitant prices, often far beyond their true market value. In essence, a registrar hijacks what would otherwise be a standard domain, inflating its value simply because it's easy to do so.

There's a sharp contrast when you work with, for instance, a Brazilian registrar, Registro.br, where all domains are treated equally.

- The shorter the domain, the easier to advertise it on radio and TV and less likely people spell it wrong ending up at the wrong place - such as a squatted or watering hole domain.

- Shorter is easier to remember.

- Shorter is easier to type on a cell phone.

- Shorter is easier to type when inebriated - not always a good thing.

I’ve noticed more companies shortening their .com domains over time, sometimes years after launch. I collected a few examples in this post and was curious if others here have seen similar trends or have more examples.

People seemed to prefer shorter domain names as far back as I can remember domain names. I always presumed that successful companies switched to a shorter name because they were better able to pay to acquire it from someone who had owned it since 1992 or whenever.

Yes, one company I worked for shortened their domain by buying it for €500k. Original owner of the domain never used it.

I can't remember what the original domain was now; I thought I knew but it's in use by a different company (and has been for ages, verified by Internet Archive), which kind of proves the point of the article.

This seems to generally be a byproduct of having more capital available to buy the shorter domains from squatters

If that's true the x.com is brilliant. I think you can have to short, to generic domains for them to be actually useful/descriptive. For instance I think chatgpt.com is better branding that just chat.com.

Also tinycapital.com → tiny.com, capital.com works, but tiny.com doesn't really tell you anything.

it's not really a "case for" anything, to my eye it's mostly that as companies get bigger they are more willing (and able) to just spaff $10m up a wall on something very stupid like a .com domain to replace the domain that they got successful with.

“However fancy a domain is, every successful business, especially with an online presence, ends up with a .com, the right .com.”

https://brajeshwar.com/2024/dot-com/

Still waiting on Microsoft to rebrand to Soft.

MCR.com

This is a timely article.. if it was 1998!

chat.openai.com to chatgpt.com made sense. Chatgpt.com to chat.com makes less sense IMO, for it's the "gpt" part that people know is associated with AI. They probably bought chat.com just to show off, they burn billions every month, so what's a few million (at most) for a domain?

I’ve a feeling or kinda read that Dharmesh did Shares instead of cash for chat.com

This article is as intelligent as making a case for earning more money, which is to say not very intelligent.

Who is still typing domains nowadays?

You open your browser and (mis)type anything and get to the (almost) right site.

Who is still opening a browser nowadays?

You open ChatGPT and (mis)type anything and get the (almost) right information.

back to the world of generic-word.com like in the dotcom boom days.

duh.com obvious.ly

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