
The .blog Bait and Switch - cschidle
http://chrisschidle.com/the-dot-blog-bait-and-switch/
======
echelon
This seems to have become the de facto pattern with the new gTLD system. A
company swoops in and buys a namespace for $200k (or more if there is a
competitive bid), and they effectively turn into the cartel equivalent of the
domain squatter.

You can register your new gTLD for anywhere between $1 and $100, depending on
what I suppose they expect their target demographic to be willing to pay. Dot
horse is more expensive than dot webcam, for instance, and I imagine dot
lawyer is more expensive than dot lol.

However, if your domain name uses a word or phrase that happens to be in their
"premium domain" dictionary, then they'll charge an elevated price based on
heuristics similar to what yesteryear's domain squatters used. Some simple and
concise domains can run hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    
    
      cheap.horse is $25/yr
      tiny.horse is $100/yr
      internet.horse is $1000/yr
      free.horse is "ask us"
    

Controlling the TLD is the ultimate form of domain squatting.

I wonder what will happen when some of these companies go under because they
can no longer afford to pay off their debts? Will those that registered domain
names lose them outright? Can someone else buy the gTLD and take them all
over?

~~~
stephenr
I wonder how much to buy "my.horse".

Then I can setup a sole mailbox "look", and have it auto respond to any
messages with "my horse is amazing".

I wonder how may will get the joke.

~~~
AndrewStephens
I have a .horse domain - I tried every permutation horse puns and in-jokes
(my.lovely.horse, etc) but they were all taken by squatters or reserved for
stupid prices.

Eventually I settled for sheep.horse, which is easy to remember but not much
else.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm glad that someone snagged hoarse.horse and is doing more with it than I
would have.

not.horse is available, too, if someone wants to tell that joke via a TLD.

And of course, bad.horse is exactly what you expect it to be.

~~~
gregmac
Don't forget to traceroute bad.horse.

~~~
captn3m0
17 bad.horse (162.252.205.130) 274.138 ms 272.734 ms 271.442 ms

18 bad.horse (162.252.205.131) 281.595 ms 346.926 ms 277.790 ms

19 bad.horse (162.252.205.132) 321.686 ms 486.714 ms 288.551 ms

20 bad.horse (162.252.205.133) 280.425 ms 281.488 ms 314.627 ms

21 he.rides.across.the.nation (162.252.205.134) 296.891 ms 297.092 ms 297.880
ms

22 the.thoroughbred.of.sin (162.252.205.135) 380.358 ms 305.077 ms 312.953 ms

23 he.got.the.application (162.252.205.136) 308.228 ms 373.024 ms 334.579 ms

24 that.you.just.sent.in (162.252.205.137) 305.447 ms 452.741 ms 306.166 ms

25 it.needs.evaluation (162.252.205.138) 342.778 ms 317.674 ms 313.240 ms

26 so.let.the.games.begin (162.252.205.139) 387.610 ms 310.964 ms 482.971 ms

27 a.heinous.crime (162.252.205.140) 320.908 ms 455.232 ms 351.113 ms

28 a.show.of.force (162.252.205.141) 327.957 ms 328.891 ms 494.652 ms

29 a.murder.would.be.nice.of.course (162.252.205.142) 406.810 ms 379.742 ms
406.548 ms

30 bad.horse (162.252.205.143) 341.390 ms 341.207 ms 531.487 ms

31 bad.horse (162.252.205.144) 415.444 ms 412.884 ms 345.962 ms

32 bad.horse (162.252.205.145) 344.182 ms 345.273 ms 343.255 ms

33 he-s.bad (162.252.205.146) 539.652 ms 352.428 ms 354.169 ms

34 the.evil.league.of.evil (162.252.205.147) 354.151 ms 368.464 ms 409.535 ms

35 is.watching.so.beware (162.252.205.148) 412.046 ms 397.060 ms 377.321 ms

36 the.grade.that.you.receive (162.252.205.149) 369.120 ms 472.142 ms 369.329
ms

37 will.be.your.last.we.swear (162.252.205.150) 450.581 ms 584.539 ms 369.829
ms

38 so.make.the.bad.horse.gleeful (162.252.205.151) 443.618 ms 380.086 ms
430.089 ms

39 or.he-ll.make.you.his.mare (162.252.205.152) 409.878 ms 409.638 ms 376.659
ms

40 o_o (162.252.205.153) 394.767 ms 392.315 ms 394.865 ms

41 you-re.saddled.up (162.252.205.154) 470.925 ms 574.203 ms 390.227 ms

42 there-s.no.recourse (162.252.205.155) 399.117 ms 398.627 ms 418.105 ms

43 it-s.hi-ho.silver (162.252.205.156) 614.293 ms 407.711 ms 410.689 ms

44 signed.bad.horse (162.252.205.157) 419.605 ms 410.318 ms 538.911 ms

~~~
collinmanderson
What a waste of precious ipv4 addresses! :)

------
ensiferum
I've never understood why some random company is allowed to arbitrate the
domain registration and make $$$ out of it. Feels like it's kinda not in the
spirit of the internet.

~~~
jklinger410
It is a complete state-sponsored racket. There's no way around it.

You pay an upfront fee to ICANN and probably some kind of recurring tax and
you get to create a TLD. You then sell this TLD for higher prices than ICANN
and run a very simple service that processes the transactions.

You then take anything lower than a 5 or 6 letter domain that is a word in the
english language and define it as a "premium" domain and charge obscene prices
for those domains. The fee you charge for the domain based on this system is
recurring. So instead of buying milk.com for $10k and selling it for $12k you
already own milk.blog by default and if someone wants to register it you
charge $500 a year.

NOT TO MENTION this whole system is like a slap in the face to a certain kind
of "domainers." People who buy domains based on their perceived value, park
them, and then try and resell them for more money. There are many millions of
dollars wrapped up in this other, also stupid racket. These companies got so
bold as to get their domains "valued" and then bet on the value of their
company based on their holdings like some type of stock filled with mortgages.
This new system is like cutting directly into that strategy but I guess ICANN
gets some of the money this way.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I have a last name that's extremely uncommon. MyLastName.com was available for
many, many years. I thought about buying it a few times in the last 20 or so
years but I don't have any use for it so I didn't. Two years ago it was bought
by a domain squatter who was probably iterating through the white pages. Now
that I can't have it I want it (I guess human nature) but they are asking like
$2k for it. It seems somehow "unfair" that "my" last name is being "held
hostage" by some faceless company that's just trying to make a quick buck.

~~~
jeremymcanally
Start a business with your name, trademark it in a certain domain, file a
claim with ICANN. Long process, but might be cheaper. :)

~~~
duskwuff
Almost as expensive (UDRP claims start around $1500), and more importantly,
it'll fail. WIPO isn't that dumb -- they can look up the registration date of
your trademark, check WHOIS, and determine that the domain was registered
before your trademark existed.

~~~
grrowl
> and determine that the domain was registered before your trademark existed

It's a shame they don't determine that the domain was _squatted_ before your
trademark existed. But it seems in their interest to give the benefit of the
doubt to the one buying many, many domains yearly.

------
Magicstatic
Here is a message I received from Gandi.net regarding the .blog domain:

\-----------------

Hello,

You are getting this email because you have performed a pre-order with your
handle {redacted} for the domain name {redacted}.

Unfortunately, this order is currently in error, because the domain name in
question has been defined as Premium by the registry. This decision is of
course beyond our control and frequently corresponds to a list of common
and/or connotative words that allow registered to apply special rates to them.

This means that in your case, we have placed the order in error, because the
price that you initially paid is no longer the price that the registry is
charging for it.

If you would like to know the price, in order to eventually purchase it, then
reply to this email, so that our support team can obtain that for you from the
registry.

As long as you are considering this, do not cancel your order, since this will
cause you to lose your place in the waiting list.

If, however, you no longer wish to register the domain, you can cancel it from
the link provided below, and your prepaid account will be refunded for the
order:

~~~
nfrmatk
Good on Gandi for providing a straightforward response. Living up to their
motto.

------
jeremymcanally
This is very common with these new TLD's. At least they didn't give it to you
for a year then jack up the price. I had jacki.party as a fun domain for my
wife that she didn't end up using, but after a year the price went from like
$29/yr to $2,495/yr. because they decided it was "premium." There was nothing
my registrar could do because it was the domain registry who decided that, so
I just let it lapse.

Why is a very specific spelling (note the lack of "e") of a not terribly
common name so expensive? No clue, but I'm guessing the same forces are at
work (i.e., $$$).

~~~
duskwuff
What registry was this? That's not supposed to be possible -- registries are
only supposed to be able to designate domains as "premium" if they aren't
registered yet.

------
overcast
They are doing this a lot with more and more of the new TLDs. Defeats the
purpose of even bothering with them. Create more, to open up the domain space,
make it cost prohibitive, so we're back to where we started.

~~~
rlpb
> Create more, to open up the domain space...

Adding TLDs doesn't open up the domain space; it closes it. The domain name
system was designed to expand downwards, by adding more hierarchies. Downwards
is where the space is. Expanding upwards is limited.

The racket ran out of space selling keywords inside .com, where this was
originally meant to be confined. Once they finish selling keywords at the
root, that'll be it.

~~~
taftster
I don't know. I don't think nested hierarchies is a thing. I mean, I guess you
have the "Go Network" go.com example (disney.go.com). But I think the ship has
sailed for deeper hierarchies. I really don't want an email address that is:
taftster@foo.bar.baz.example.com

~~~
rlpb
I didn't make any judgement on whether it is a good or bad thing. The fact
remains: don't delude yourself into thinking that adding a TLD free-for-all
opens up the space. It doesn't. It closes it.

The current "problem" stems from the fact that .coms are full. Once the TLD
space is full, the same problem will remain. Everyone who wants one cannot
have a memorable name in a flat namespace. There are too many people and there
is too little room.

~~~
Whitestrake
When that happens, I fully expect that as the value of available domain names
go up, people will invest in expensive domains (blah.com) in order to treat
them as "2LD"s and sell its 3LDs (xyz.blah.com). But it won't happen while
there are 2LDs available for the exact reasons stated above (nobody wants a
subdomain when they can have an actual domain).

------
octasimo
I've also got stood up with fashion.blog. Full refund and no invitation to
auction. I haven't even bothered to ask for details, because that was their
way of assessing and freezing the domain names that people would be interested
in buying.

~~~
SamBam
> because that was their way of assessing and freezing the domain names that
> people would be interested in buying.

Indeed. Seems like it would be easy for them to use the auction to
automatically see "300 people tried to claim this domain, it must be a good
one, let's make it premium."

They wouldn't need to spend a penny doing market research to select the
premium names themselves.

~~~
brazzledazzle
That's the feeling I got as well. The answers were really dodgy too. But such
an ethically challenged practice would reflect poorly on the WordPress brand
and you wouldn't want your low level employees to know about it since they
could easily leak it. So maybe the CS reps weren't dodgy so much as trying to
keep customers happy with very little information available to them.

Maybe one way you could do it is create a tiny subsidiary to manage the
reservations/registration. The subsidiary can be created under the pretenses
of shielding the parent company from legal liability so you can both limit the
team size, the scope of their purpose and isolate them from the parent
company.

Build the backend to provide information on reservations but accessible only
to subsidiary financial management/officers and parent company employees whose
wealth is tied to the success of shares in the company. Officially only share
the total number of reservations and financials with the parent company via
something documented like email. Then the backend reporting is decoupled from
the reservations that come in for early access. If you setup a distinct
founder program and establish enough time between the reservation announcement
and when you give normal employees early access you don't even have to worry
about your employees snatching up the most profitable ones.

The first the CS reps hear about it is when a reply/complaint comes in from
one of the cancellations. When asked their supervisor only knows that the name
came over as one of the early access reservations from the parent company. The
CS reps don't have enough information to draw conclusions because they don't
get access to numbers and an early access employee program provides plausible
deniability if the reps start asking questions.

That was kind of a fun mental exercise. I've seen some real cloak and dagger
stuff from people but those were always at small companies. I have no idea how
plausible any of that would be, especially in companies this big. But it would
be interesting to see what would happen if we had a fairly unique but
uninteresting domain that wasn't obviously gibberish and a a lot of us put in
a reservation for it at random intervals to create a perception of interest
and popularity.

------
AndrewStephens
As a fellow very-common-name sufferer, I long ago gave up any hope of getting
a vanity domain name (how I wish I had paid the $25 back in 1996). Most of the
new TLD seem pretty scammy to me, the costs in obtaining and running most
obscure TLDs far outweigh what could be got by paying customers actually
waiting to run sites off them.

I suspect that a lot of them are just hoping that enough large companies buy
up kfc.blog, walmart.porn, etc to make a return on investment. Fleecing people
who actually want the domains is just icing on the cake.

I am somewhat of a hypocrite, I run my blog off
[https://sheep.horse/](https://sheep.horse/), but only because I thought that
the .horse TLD was silly enough to be worth supporting.

~~~
TheGrumpyBrit
That's exactly it. Brand protection companies like MarkMonitor will buy these
up as a matter of course to protect their clients, and they'll do so at the
inflated Early Access rates to boot. By the time the domains are released to
the public, these companies have already made their profit.

~~~
usrusr
At one point even their clients will realize that the value of owning
{name}.{everything} is more finite than the number of possible values for
{everything}. When this happens, TLD racketeers will be sitting on a well
oiled money burning machine, because only few of those who are attracted by
that kind of business are good at keeping expenses low in times of plenty. The
end game for many squatting-TLDs will be an existential pricing standoff
between the dying registrar and the very low number of users that were foolish
enough to build a long term identity in one of its namespaces.

------
ygaels_armpit
This seems like it has gotten out of control - it is a basic key/value lookup,
and we've created a rent-seeking, global series of registries to further suck
good money from people.

I worked briefly at a registry - it is money for jam.

I don't know if the DNS protocol and all the related ones are fundamentally
broken or need fixing, but it seems to me the problem is ICANN and the web
that spreads out from under it.

Why can't we just create an alternate ... distributed naming system, except
without the rent-seeking/government ownership attached? I mean, this focus on
how important the last bit is is ridiculous, the namespace doesn't have to be
artificially restricted, beyond what the protocol might require.

I guess I have a simplistic view and probably lack a bit of history, and there
must be something preventing it. Do the top-level servers collude, and help to
create something like ICANN, or was it taken out of people's hands etc?

~~~
toyg
_> except without the rent-seeking/government ownership attached?_

Because people like money. This TLD business literally _invented a new
economic activity_ , and one with great margins. It doesn't really hurt
anyone, has little to no cost, and makes a pretty penny. People With Money
_love_ stuff like this; if tomorrow they could invent a marketable TLD system
for physical addresses, phone numbers or _anything_ else, they'd jump at the
chance.

This is just how the capitalist world works: stuff exists to make money,
everything else is a bonus.

~~~
ygaels_armpit
Agreed, I guess the way that works in general is just disappointing in that it
doesn't produce anything meaningful or advance anything (to my mind). It's
spinning wheels and burning energy for no appreciable reason, to make some
people rich.

------
TheGrumpyBrit
I was keeping a close eye on .family for quite a while - I'm getting married
next year, so mysurname.family would have been a good domain to have both for
wedding planning and personal email accounts.

When it finally came out, I eagerly went to my favourite registrar to try and
buy it, and found that it's listed at over £1000. It's not a particularly
common name either. Out of interest, I tried a few other surnames off the top
of my head, and it seems that pretty much any domain that could be somebody's
surname has been bumped up massively.

Of course, they have every right to do that, but the people buying these
domains are individuals - very few of these domains are ever going to have a
business use. To me, it looks like they've done nothing more than price
themselves out of the whole point of their TLD.

Instead, I'm going to wait out the expiry of the .com, which isn't being
squatted as such, but it is owned by a company for a single software product
of theirs which looks like it was written in the 90s and requires you to send
a cheque if you want to buy it. The last update was helpfully reminding
visitors that the app wouldn't be compatible with the upcoming OS X Lion. One
day, they'll stop renewing that domain...my time will come.

~~~
vxNsr
My family name is $20/year!! Now I need to decide if it's worth supporting
this cartel...

------
tobltobs
I believe this new gTLD registries will manage it to finally sink their own
boat. They are behaving so greedy that this new gTLD will never become
popular. But then it wont take long until the first registries will close shop
and this will be the end of this whole ngTLD scam. Because nobody will invest
money to market a domain which might not exist anymore in a few years.

There are some proposed safeguards built into the rules to prevent this
meltdown caused by failing registries. But looking at how the industry
currently behaves I don't think the will to stand to the rules and grab as
much money as they can and leave the sinking ship asap.

------
dmm
When the .beer tld came out I tried to buy "california.beer" as soon as
domains were available to the public. The site wouldn't let me buy even though
it was listed as available. It was finally registered by a squatter months
later. I wouldn't be surprised if the good names were kept in reserve and sold
through special channels.

------
legohead
I'll tell my TLD story. I was following .family for a long time, since my
current "primary domain" is horrible and hard to say. <family name>.family
sounded pretty awesome.

There was that whole pre-registration BS but it is so convoluted and expensive
I just waited till it went live. It did, and when I checked on my last name,
it was set at $1200/year for a normally $30/year domain. This was when I was
introduced to the idea of reserved domains in this new TLD system.

So I emailed them and put forth my argument, that this TLD in particular is a
bit unfair, considering I don't control what name I'm born with. I didn't
think it would have any impact, because $$$.

One day I got an email and they offered me to buy it for a one-time price of
$1200 and then the renewal would be set at $30. I said no. There are so many
TLDs now that it's easy to get a common-word, easy-to-say one.

~~~
Cpoll
> that this TLD in particular is a bit unfair, considering I don't control
> what name I'm born with

To be fair, it would also have been a bit unfair to the next guy with your
last name if you had taken it.

------
coldcode
I signed up too and then saw the ridiculous prices and policies. Happy to
stick with .com for 10 bucks.

~~~
jamchris
Like the author I would also have no problem in paying a few of several
hundred dollars as an initial registration one time fee, for a domain like
chris.blog.

I would really prefer using chris.blog instead of buying a .com domain like
this-is-chriss-development-blog.com, just because any shorter .com domain is
already taken.

~~~
cschidle
Right on. While I said "I appreciate a good name", I'm truly a sucker for a
good name. Branding is huge, even when it's a personal brand.

So yes, a one-time fee of $250-$1,000 feels ok to me, especially considering
what Automattic paid for the TLD.

------
yoodenvranx
What is the long-term security/availability of those new tlds?

If I register a .de domain today I am pretty sure that it will last a long
time. But some of the new ones have a pretty sketchy vibe to it and I am not
sure if I'd trust them enough to build a business on top of a .fancy domain

------
otterley
The Registrar's policy language makes so many exceptions for themselves that
you'd have better odds playing roulette:

[https://knockknockwhoisthere.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dot...](https://knockknockwhoisthere.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dotblog-
launch-and-registration-policy-2-0.pdf)

"We are not bound to select a winner among RFP respondents and may hold the
Domain Name for future allocation."

"We may activate and allocate to ourselves or third parties certain Domain
Names (plus their IDN variants, where applicable) deemed necessary for the
operation or the promotion of TLD."

"the Registry makes no guarantees or warranties as to whether any applicant
will be successful in registering any Registry Domain Name."

------
henvic
In 2011 I paid for and registered o1.io (I really wanted 01.io, but back then
it was not available to register domains containing only numbers on .io).

The .io NIC web interface is really horrible and I ended up in an inconsistent
state after making the "horrible" mistake of clicking the back button. Even
though my Paypal account got charged, I received an email confirming I was the
owner of the domain, and so on, I couldn't access my account.

Next step I took was contacting them. I got ignored and after 7 days later
they made a transaction reversal on Paypal and I never heard a word back from
them, even though I have tried to contact.

Some time later they made the o1.io domain a reserved one and so if I wanted
it now I would have to pay thousands. What a shame.

------
logfromblammo
At this point, this looks ever more akin to charging people to have their
phone numbers listed in a phone book. If you don't know what a phone book is,
it was the DNS-equivalent of the 1960s. You know those plastic-wrapped bricks
of yellow paper that sometimes appear on your doorstep, that you just drop
right into the recycling bin? Those things are actually phone books.

The phone book is rather simple. Your individual given name or your business
dba name is the dictionary key, and the phone number is the dictionary value.
Your dictionary entry is automatically included, unless you paid to be
"unlisted". That would keep your phone service provider from printing your
name-number pair in _their_ phone books.

This approach is still viable. Every state has a database of corporate names
and dba registrations. The secretary of state for Illinois, as an example,
could make aaa-plumbing.corp.il.us resolve to the server address for "AAA
Plumbing, Inc.", if that business chose to disclose it, or to a landing page
otherwise. Likewise, zzz-towing.llc.il.us could resolve to the address for
"ZZZ Towing, LLC".

The US Patent and Trademark Office could do the same. Let lego.028.tm.us (and
lego.009.tm.us, lego.041.tm.us, etc.) resolve to LEGO Juris A/S Corp's
servers, so you can see a site about plastic building blocks, and let
lego.005.tm.us resolve to American Lego Group Inc's server, so you can see a
site about soy protein supplements.

If you are Foobar LLC, you really shouldn't have to register "foobar.com" and
"foobar.net" and "foobar.cc" and "foobar.co.uk" and "foobar.biz" and
"foobar.info" and "foobar.sucks" and "foobar.pooky" and "foobar.booger". It
isn't really elucidative, and does not help discoverability to have so many
TLDs. The problem is that all the simple names have been mined out of the
original TLDs, and there is no mechanism to resolve name collisions between
Foobar LLC out of the US and Foobar GmbH in Germany. Whoever grabs
"foobar.com" first gets to keep it, and the other is stuck trying to make some
DNS entry that somehow relates to the company name.

Adding a bunch of niche TLDs helps a bit, but not if the registrar can charge
$1k/year for names. That's just ridiculous. You're not going to end up with
all the Johns on the Internet getting their own john.something domain name
that way. You just let the richest John on the Internet to have _all_ the
john.anything domain names.

~~~
mcguire
" _If you don 't know what a phone book is, it was the DNS-equivalent of the
1960s. You know those plastic-wrapped bricks of yellow paper that sometimes
appear on your doorstep, that you just drop right into the recycling bin?_"

You mean monitor stands?

------
chriswwweb
The ICANN whois also does not give any information, there is just a copyright
message from Nominet UK

[https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=chris.blog](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=chris.blog)

Maybe the domain got bought during the sunrise period by a copyright holder!?

[https://my.blog/launch-plan/](https://my.blog/launch-plan/)

~~~
cschidle
The reply I received from get.blog support (last image in the post) stated
that "chris.blog ended up being part of the list of reserved domains that are
not available for registration". So I imagine they'll either keep it internal
or sell it as a premium domain.

~~~
chriswwweb
Yeah right, you had mentioned in your P.S. two other names dave and matt, I
did a whois for those two and got some information:

[https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=matt.blog](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=matt.blog)
[https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=dave.blog](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=dave.blog)

So yes it seems it got reserved. I wonder why too.

P.S. I'm a chris too ;) that's why im so interested in this, I own chris.lu
but as it is a country tld this is not so good from a SEO point of view. I
want to change if I find a better one, but haven't found one yet. Have fun
with your new chris.lol :)

------
0898
I wanted a domain for a tax industry blog. I really wanted digital.tax, but it
was held back as premium. Then, one day I was browsing 123reg and noticed it
was available. I quickly looked at other registrars and it was still labeled
as either taken or reserved. I placed my order and got the domain! I'm not
sure how common these discrepancies are but I guess they do occur, so perhaps
all hope is not lost.

------
xchaotic
Fwiw I snagged lech.blog at list price (so $30 + 220), I wouldn't pay a cent
more, but my main problem is that I still have no access to the domain and,
unless I am provoven (or refunded) otherwise, my domain registartion runs from
28th of October. Some email were sent from an unverified, unencrypted,
unrelated domain - I nearly sent them to spam. They really need to sort out
their internal processes.

------
nikolay
Same happened to me. They should expect a class action lawsuit as even though
the list was not finalized, they should have said something.

I had something like this happened before with WordPress.com - I have
nikolay.wordpress.com, and then an employee took it way from me. After making
a long discussion on TechChrunch about it, the employee decided to give it
back to me.

So, my point is, there's nothing new under the sun here - obviously Matt is
the old Matt having double standards, and not knowing what's acceptable and
what is not in the digital world.

Also, he's going against his investor's interested, because some of these
domains could've brought in millions of dollars, but he wants to do his
buddies favors, and not honor what was promised.

Edit: Maybe if there are several of us, we should try to see if we can have a
class action lawsuit. Our hundreds of dollars were used by the Automattic for
3 months, that's a lot of money collectively, and they should not get away -
there was no mentioning of any Founders when they took our money!

------
mikegedelman
> Perhaps it's not fair to call this bait & switch. Really it was bait &
> refund

The title of this article was a bait & switch.

~~~
cschidle
I was being generous when I wrote that line. But I maintain that clearly
stating it will go to auction then pulling the auction is a "switch".

------
codebook
In my case, my surname TLD exists like XXX.{surname}. So I bought it w/ my
first name ==> firstname.surname . It's cool and I will keep it as long as I
can.

I agree with the OP. They seems to gather the popularity info by accepting
pre-register requests.

Is there any policy to ban this behavior? Shouldn't the TLD be publicly
opened?

~~~
eonw
technically its their property and theirs to do with as they please. though i
disagree with the behavior.

nothing is stopping you from reselling *.whatever.com and so forth.

i wish i had my whole name as a domain, thats pretty awesome for you!

------
_Codemonkeyism
"Perhaps it's not fair to call this bait & switch. Really it was bait &
refund"

~~~
savanaly
The article title was a bait and switch! Honestly, I don't know much about the
domain registration business but I had always imagined it worked even suckier
than the way he describes it working in this case.

~~~
cschidle
When you hand over $250 and they hold it for 3 months with the promise of
giving you a shot at an auction, then they cancel the auction... I still call
that a "switch".

Still haven't received the refund, by the way.

------
charlesafinley
I had this happen to me as well. I registered a domain directly with get.blog
on the day that they first started accepting pre-registrations. I got an email
a couple of days ago saying that I would be getting my money back, nothing
about an auction. I asked for details because I too was expecting an auction.
My response also came from the same guy ("Ran") who said that it wasn't
available when my "application" was processed.

The twist in this case? The domain I applied for is now pointing directly
towards WordPress.com. So get.blog, owned by parent company Automattic, took
the domain which had been made available for the public, and gave it to
WordPress.com. I wonder what ICANN will have to say?

SHADY AF.

------
smpetrey
Who wants to help me create an .arse TLD? Who's with me!

------
Terr_
I've long felt the only sane approach is to define country-level TLDs (via the
UN or something) transition everything under them, and then let each legal
jurisdiction handle (or mishandle) their own shit.

While it's far less-convenient for global companies and "ignoring borders", it
decentralizes the system. Compartmentalizing failure and allowing some kinds
of competition.

~~~
zokier
That would be lovely, but I don't see any way of such change actually
happening. The current hierarchy is extremely entrenched and heavily supported
by the most powerful entities on the net.

~~~
ygaels_armpit
I wonder if using the validation of the DNS record and all the surrounding
nonsense is really a useful function though.

I mean, if we created a new distributed system, and grandfathered the old one,
how can the current incumbents stop it? The control over a name pointing to an
address could be done with a blockchain, I'm hearing.

So we move to a new naming convention. An arbitrary prefix on the end of a
name shouldn't mean $$$$.

I'm saying we (techies anyway, not money-grubbing VC's), can make the decision
for them, en masse. When they say "But, we need to make money from this!", we
reply, "No, we need a naming service for these internet addresses. Go get
stuffed _. "

_ The finer details of how it all works can be left till later.

~~~
zokier
> I mean, if we created a new distributed system, and grandfathered the old
> one, how can the current incumbents stop it?

That's a weird way of putting it. Anyone can create DNS roots based on any
hierarchy they want, no-one will stop you from doing that. The meaningful
question is how do you get anyone to use your fancy new roots?

------
intrasight
I fail to understand the purpose of these non-standard TLDs. Nobody is going
to remember or type in such a domain, so you stuff is only going to be found
by a web search - where a standard domain would be better. So why not just
register a .com - which are also cheaper?

~~~
TheDrizzle43
Have you ever tried to buy a .com domain dude? There's hardly any useful names
left.

~~~
wiseleo
All 60+ domains I own are .com although I have a .net and a .org for a couple
of words. I only paid premium price of $2000 on one of them. My company name
is Sendlinks and getting Sendlinks.com kind of makes sense. ;)

In particular, I have a 5-character easy to spell meaningless name that I am
reserving for some large scale service I will build in the future.

Getting an unregistered .com is tough, but many are available at a reasonable
price on secondary market. I define reasonable price as under $1000. When I
decided on the Sendlinks name, the seller originally wanted $5000. I made the
decision to buy it at that price once I was ready to re-brand.

Since no one else would likely buy the name, I wasn't too concerned about
someone taking it. Fast forward a few months later, I was at the point where I
had money and so I decided to just buy it then and cross that item from my
launch checklist. Luckily for me, the price dropped to $2000.

I own the .com domains of my Internet nickname and my last name among other
properties.

------
milesf
Can someone think of a better way to do DNS? I remember when the internet was
just a hosts file you had a copy of on your computer, so it is not outside the
realm of possibilities to come up with something different. Something better.

------
beardog
Are gTLDs like this even worth it as a primary domain? In my limited
experience, these kinds of domains tend to confuse people who are not
technically oriented.

~~~
broodbucket
For people who aren't technically oriented, anything that isn't .com/.net/.org
(and regional variants like .com.au) are confusing, but there's no good domain
names left there. If you're starting a website you're stuck with the choice of
a terrible .com domain with _shudder_ hyphens or something, or you can get
something like yourbusiness.shopping or yourhandle.blog.

It's gonna be a case-by-case thing whether one option is better than the
other, but them's the breaks.

------
ctingom
I thought about buying coffee.blog but the fee was 100k per year! Insane!

------
Mao_Zedang
What are the rules around changing annual registration fees for gTLDs?

~~~
ayh
The new domain companies can raise them whenever they want and however much
they want.

------
smegel
Don't give these scum your money, moral of the story is.

------
andrewvijay
I exclaimed 'wow 30 bucks?' when I saw 30. But then was shocked at 250.
Fainted at the auction.

------
rubbingalcohol
No one cares.

