
China Is Making Domain Name History - Perados
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/12/china-making-domain-name-history/
======
ufo
One of the reasons the Chinese like these short numeric domain names is that
they have a complex system of homophones where each number represents a word
and a sequence of number can represent a whole sentence.

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danieltillett
It apparent is not only that, it is also the way they use qwerty keyboards
where short combinations of letters expand out to Chinese characters.

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ilurk
I'm a bit confused about the whole DNS thing.

Namely when I buy a domain name from who exactly am I buying it from?

Put in other words, what's the best way to buy a domain name and avoid the
middleman fees?

In terms of renewal, does it make a difference if you buy it from the root TLD
authority (not sure if saying something silly here) or some squatter/middle-
man/domain-park?

Who decides on the price hike for the next year?

I find the whole DNS management quite broken. The new TLDs is a good example.
.dev got owned by Google and a bunch of other TLDs got acquired by some VC
backed digital-estate company.

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joedavison
The hierarchy of Internet domain names goes something like this:

ICANN -> TLD operator (registry) -> registrar -> reseller (optional) ->
registrant (you)

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ilurk
So I found this article [1] about domain name transfer. Which clarified one
doubt that I had. As I was under the impression that you were hopelessly stuck
at paying rent for life middleman (to a reseller or in this case a registrar).

This raises another question. Is it worth starting you own registrar? Or it is
fee prohibitive?

[1] [http://lifehacker.com/5794507/how-to-jump-ship-from-
godaddy-...](http://lifehacker.com/5794507/how-to-jump-ship-from-godaddy-to-a-
better-web-host)

~~~
joedavison
Registrars need to pay a yearly fee to ICANN (in the $xx,xxx range if I recall
correctly) and significant startup fees as well.

This qualifies you to pay 'wholesale' prices for domain names. Wholesale
prices are set by the registry. (e.g. Verisign sets the wholesale price for
.com, Afilias for .org, etc.)

It is worth doing if you register a very large number of domain names, like
100,000+. Some large corporations have their own registrar, Google for
example. (More recently Google has also entered the registry business, with
their new TLDs.)

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rhpistole
My 3 letter .org turned 17 years old last week.

Not that I'm interested in selling, but nobody's ever tried to buy it from me
for more than the registration fees. I feel left out.

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dangerpowpow
care to tell us?

~~~
knd775
I guessed, and it turns out I was right!

    
    
      rhp.org

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justaman
I feel like the trend in domain name "investing" is a fad.

I find myself googling for websites more than actually typing them out if they
are not populated by recent history anyway.

~~~
CyrusL
Direct navigation is definitely becoming less common. The browser search bar,
the awesome bar, and App Stores are increasingly becoming the ways that
internet users reach their destinations.

Still, .com domain names continue their march up in value. It's been a ~20
year fad at this point.

~~~
cpplinuxdude
Yup. And right now, people above a certain age raise an eyebrow when a domain
is not a .com, or .co.uk, or .[something familiar].

But the more time goes on, the more we'll have users who just don't care if
it's a .io, .xyz or .whatever.

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martinni
If I recall correctly, the term "google" and "youtube" were among the most
"googled" terms. People are too lazy to type out the URL anyway.

~~~
frandroid
They're not just lazy; many people don't _understand_ what URLs are. They just
navigate the web by googling for site names or whatever content they want.

~~~
samstave
And some are stuck in this way... I have attempted to train/show/explain how
the URL bar is also the same as the search field on google.com.... even once
they understood, the response was often - "Well, I don't care - this is how I
do it and this is how I like to do it"

/ __ _pulls out hair_ __

~~~
mikeash
If it works, no matter how ridiculous, it's best just to let it be.

[https://xkcd.com/763/](https://xkcd.com/763/)

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ctstover
More anecdotes for future economics courses to point to for explaining what
happens when you try to tightly restrict what people are aloud to invest in.
Just like the dozens of empty megalopolises of high end condos over there.

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hackuser
What happened to the new TLDs? Is there not interest or not user
understanding? I remember explaining them years ago to some end users who
objected to the idea; they wanted to hold onto the familiar ".com", even
though it did nothing for them.

I thought they would greatly increase supply of popular second-level domains.
Also, I thought large organizations who could afford it would setup their own
TLDs and leave behind registrars and the associated issues. For example, why
doesn't IBM use .ibm instead of ibm.com?

But it looks like the vast majority still want only .com.

~~~
dingaling
Many of the new TLDs are prohibitively expensive for individuals or SMEs. For
example .club is nearly €6000 per year through Gandi versus €20 for a .org or
€7 for .org.uk

The prices may drop in future to try to stimulate demand but right now they're
mostly hilarious.

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danieltillett
I own a bunch of short domain names that I picked up back in 2007 when they
were dropped. It was a fun hobby at the time looking through the list of new
available names trying to find useful ones. In the process I picked up a bunch
of short names like nzdk.com which I use for various projects. In the last few
month I have been getting around 20 offers a week for these. The prices have
become crazy.

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ben174
I wonder if this is specific to .com or if short domains in other TLDs are
becoming of value.

I bought bo.gg a while back just because it was so short and easy to remember,
I figured it would be useful. And just yesterday I got an email from what
seemed to be a very serious Chinese buyer offering $800.

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jwcacces
Aren't there 1369 (37^2) 2 letter domain names? A-Z (case insensitive) 0-9,
hyphen? Even if you restrict it to start with letter, no hyphen in last,
that's still 936 two letter domain names.

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pearjuice
So domain squatting is investing now? Good to know.

~~~
jrcii
Cybersquatting is not a legitimate business and anyone who participates in it
should feel bad.

~~~
jjaredsimpson
Why

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tonyedgecombe
I can't help feeling domain names are too cheap, just raising the prices a
little would wipe out many of the squatters.

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FarhadG
where would be a good place to sell some of these domains?

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kelukelugames
A Chinese company is why I'm kelukelu.me instead of kelu.me :(

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bagosm
I suspect the china market is shifting away from having younger people
"invest" in the real estate bubble and towards "investing" in domain names..

Oh the poor guys don't know the pour down of all the new TLDs probably...

Maybe that's why they are starting to open up the great firewall. Just to
steal all that money once more.

