

5 all-time domain expirations in Internet’s history - ivanbrezakbrkan
http://whoapi.com/blog/1582/5-all-time-domain-expirations-in-internets-history/

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ryanjshaw
I find this an interesting challenge: I tried to think of whether there is any
way to turn this into a profitable _and_ ethical business opportunity, but
couldn't. Can anybody?

By ethical I mean you don't try to drop catch the domains and sell them back
(that's illegal I believe, even if you only ask for a small payment?).

Presumably you can't be a good Samaritan that monitors and makes an effort to
contact sites that are near to losing their domains -- they'd have no
incentive to pay you anything because there is no existing relationship, and
they can renew the domain without your involvement.

Alternatively, as soon as you attempt to build a model that establishes such a
relationship, your model is doomed to fail for the same reason you want your
business to exist: if the company owning the domain can't keep on top of
paying the domain, why would they keep on top of paying you? If they had the
foresight to pay you, wouldn't they have the foresight to ensure the domain
renewals get handled?

Is there a workable model? Or perhaps I'm overly critical; maybe there really
is value in a business that double-checks things like this for you, maybe you
could cold-email business and sell such a service?

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boobsbr
In December of 2009, Americanas.com, the e-shop counterpart of Lojas
Americanas (one of Brazil's largest retail stores), forgot to renew their
domain.

www.americanas.com.br still worked, but the shop is actually called
Americanas.com, and losing the domain the company is named after is a bit of a
problem.

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Timmmmmm
That title makes no sense at all. Perhaps they meant "5 all-time worst domain
expirations"?

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dmm
HN automatically strips certain words from titles. Sometimes it messes up the
titles a bit. The word here was probably "Top".

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drewbug
But, it looks like the title's the same on the actual site.

