

Ask YC: How important is it to make your domain defensible? - bmaier

If you can get the .com how important is it to have the .net and .org as well as domains for potential competitors and defensive domains like companynamesucks.com?
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bigbee
For the $10 it costs you to register another domain, I'd say it's worth the
price to get the .net, .org, and possibly some European/Asian domains if you
can see yourself doing business there in the future. I wouldn't go into
companynamesucks.com and the like though - there's no end to the number of
such domains that people can come up with if they really want to hurt you. A
better use of your time and money would be to make sure you don't give
customers a reason to say you suck...

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ericb
I put worrying about this (and paying for lesser domains) in the pointless
waste of time and money box. It's more important to test ideas fast and cheap
than to protect a non-business from unlikely squatters. Who goes to the .org
site first? No one whose business I'm worried about losing. The investment has
zero return, and protects you from nothing if you have the .com. I changed
names 4 times for my last idea; I'm very glad I never bought the variant
domains.

Edit: On top of the reasons above--if you get to the point where you've
trademarked your name and succeeded, I think you can kick people off the
squatter domains through legal means.

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hhm
You can't guess all the possible alternative names for your site, and for your
enemy site. Drop it.

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Shooter
I'd say it depends on how big your idea is and how much capital you have to
start with...

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imsteve
I'm not doing it.

