The Ascendancy of .co
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An anonymous reader tipped the fact that, with the .com namespace getting pretty well mined out, GoDaddy.com's front page for domain registrations now defaults to .co instead of .com. The article claims that GoDaddy registers about half of new domain names. Neither the article nor GoDaddy makes it explicit that .co is a ccTLD belonging to Colombia, or that registering one costs about three times as much as a .com, at $29.99 per year. And if you select a .co domain name from GoDaddy's front page, a number of TLD variants are presented alongside .co — but .com is not among them.
citibank.co (Score:5, Funny)
now with moar than $100 billion in frictionless laundered money. That's what we call .colocation!
GoDaddy stories on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions [slashdot.org] (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera [slashdot.org] (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft [slashdot.org] (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage [slashdot.org] (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat [slashdot.org] (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site [slashdot.org] (2007-01-26) That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names [nodaddy.com].
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? [slashdot.org] (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? [slashdot.org] (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy [slashdot.org] (2007-05-29)
According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com [wired.com]. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com [slashdot.org] (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns [slashdot.org] (2008-04-08)
GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers [slashdot.org] (2008-06-29)
KnujOn Updates Top 10 Spam-Friendly Registrars List [slashdot.org] (2009-02-06, 80 comments) GoDaddy is on the list.
R.I.P. FTP [slashdot.org] (2009-07-13, 359 comments) The GoDaddy web site is extremely complicated. Quote: "In that case, why don't more people switch to administering their sites via SFTP instead of FTP? Here are the steps it took me to enable SFTP on my GoDaddy hosting account. Feel free to use this as a reference, but the obvious point is that as long as this many steps are required, it's safe to say that most users won't be switching: 1) Go to the 'Hosting' menu and pick 'My Hosting Account.' 2) Next to the name of your website, pick 'Manage Account.' This will open the Hosting Control Center. 3) In Hosting Control Center, click to expand the 'Settings' options. 4) In the 'Settings' control panel, click the 'SSH' icon. 5) You will see a page saying 'SSH is not set up', and prompting you to enter a phone number so that their automated service can call you with a PIN number. After you enter your phone number, the phone rings a second later, and you enter the PIN in a form on the GoDaddy website. 6 ) You will then see a page which says: Current Hosting Account Status: Pending Account Change -- Your request to enable SSH is being processed. This upgrade may take up to 24 hours." [Punctuation and emphasis changed for clarity.]
Registrars Still Ignoring ICANN Rules [slashdot.org] (2009-07-22, 122 comments) Quote: "GoDaddy (and their reseller arm, Wild West Domains) have a different problem: They still block transfers for 60 days after a registrant's contact update, even after the ICANN update specifically prohibited doing so. They freely admit it, too."
What registrar would you recommend? (Score:4, Interesting)
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gandi.net
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I've been registering with 1&1 for years now. I have a free hosting account (developer preview) from 5 years ago. In any case, they charge $10 a year for .com - used to be $6 a year.
NearlyFreeSpeech (Score:2)
www.nearlyfreespeech.net is the best registrar and webhost anywhere. Rock bottom prices, clean website, and absolutely no bullshit. Just sayin' as a satisfied customer for three years.
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I had about 30 domains with GoDaddy, and was very unhappy with their user interface and customer service. I wanted to be able to make mass changes to the domains, such as name servers. I tried a few different ones and settled on gkg.net [gkg.net]. It's not the prettiest, but it's inexpensive and reliable, and the website UI is simple (no crazy Ajax, Flash interface, browser requirements, etc). For my highly important business domains, I went with DynDNS [dyndns.com], which is slightly more expensive, but has a clean and beautiful
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I've been very happy with gandi.net. [gandi.net]
Namecheap (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using Namecheap for years, and they've been pretty awesome. They have a nice set of DNS management tools, they notify me of all important things, and as their name implies, they're inexpensive.
Another thing I like about Namecheap is that you can delegate control over your names to other people. I run a suite of hobby gaming web sites, and I've made contingency plans in case I get hit by a proverbial bus. (Or a real one.) I've given one of the other site admins permissions over the names so that if need be, he can manage them or even move them to another registrar. Obviously, I trust him implicitly, but the point is that if something happens to me, the names aren't just up for grabs once the registration expires. They may exist, but I don't know of another registrar that allows you to delegate permissions like this.
I can't speak about their technical support; I've never had to use it.
Just to prove I'm not a shill for the company (I'm only affiliated with them as being a customer), if there's one thing that's stupid about them, it's their name. I mean, "Namecheap"? Makes them sound so, I dunno, Wal-Martish, especially given what has been a good record so far with me.
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I agree - I host over 100 domains through Namecheap, and have never had any problem with them. I left GoDaddy because of their PlaySkool, Javascript intense interface, long before I had enough domains to be worried about the privacy and security implications.
I also like money. A lot. In that line, here's an affiliate link to Namecheap [namecheap.com] that might make me some :)
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That's what I did, and now my company provides and sells domains to all of our website design customers as a part of our packages.
Why go to a secondary reseller, when you can become one yourself and take out a middle man.
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I'll look into this - thanks :)
I don't do much web development these days, but this is still worth checking into.
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I can speak for NameCheap's technical support. They are quick and helpful. I only have certificates with them, but it's an ever-growing number :)
I have a reseller account with some other company for domains, which is tens of cents cheaper per domain (special offers not included). The only difference between going through NameCheap and reseller accounts is that the latter normally requires a little deposit. If they need no deposit, they're usually slightly more expensive. For just a few domains I'd go with N
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I can second the Namecheap recommendation. I moved my registration and hosting/email of my dozen domains from Godaddy to Namecheap last year and have been very satisfied.
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What do you mean by "weird domains"? Are you referring to something like "ifuckfishinmydreams.com" where the name itself is weird or "nationalreview.com" where all the writers are weird, or "lookbook.nu" where the idea is weird or...?
(Note: "ifuckfishinmydreams.com" is not a real website. But it you're interested in owning that domain, drop me an email. We can talk.)
It's not mined out. (Score:5, Informative)
It's squatted, sniped, tasted, and front-run out.
When a speculator can register thousands of names and move them around for free by playing the system, is there any wonder that .com is "mined out"? When a registrar front-runs domain names (Network Solutions) and fills the space with reserved names for itself, is there any wonder that .com is "mined out"?
Get rid of domain tasting and other shenanigans and the problem will go away.
--
BMO
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This.
Also 'investors'. A little while back I read an online article by someone congratulating themselves on investing in .com names. He was going through a dictionary, finding obscure words and testing to see if they were available, then buying them up. He had about 30 dictionary words and he was going to make money on the idea, also encouraging others to do the same.
It's one of those times when you wish you could reach through the screen and strangle the person on the other side. Squatters, 'investors' and
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The easy solution would be a "use it or lose it" rule where the ownership of a domain that is just parked will be revoked when someone else would like to register it.
Re:It's not mined out. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can trivially set up a mail account, subscribe to a few newsletters and ignore any "use it or lose it" kind of rules. The internet is more than just the web, remember?
Re:It's not mined out. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a domain that I currently use only for email but it is still in use. The Web is not the Net.
And who is going judge what constitutes "use" anyway? Are you going to visit each of millions of Web sites and determine which are "real" and which are merely parked?
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I know that WWW ist just one of many services. And a definition of "use" (or better of what kind of behaviour leads to losing the domain) that eliminates most of the speculants and cybersquatters but doesn't hurt other people shouldn't be too difficult to find.
And if it's only done on request by someone with serious interest in using the domain, there would be no need to "visit millions of websites".
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I doubt it. Accepting email (and then ignoring it) costs the "speculants and cybersquatters" nothing - they just point them all at the same mail server just as they do with the web servers.
Plus, why is putting up a page of advertisements not "using"?
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I doubt it. Accepting email (and then ignoring it) costs the "speculants and cybersquatters" nothing - they just point them all at the same mail server just as they do with the web servers.
Oh my. Just imagine this: guy wants to register $HISNAME-software.com that is taken by a domain grabber. Guy goes to some kind of ombudsman who gives the thing a closer look and easily sees that the running mailserver is just an alibi. Domain will be transferred, grabber maybe fined.
Sure, you could never really get all of them, if we make sure not to have "false positives", but why shouldn't we at least get rid of the big ones, where it is easy to proove?
Plus, why is putting up a page of advertisements not "using"?
Because of the missing content?!
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Flamebait? Seriously? What a stupid mod.
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The easy solution would be a "use it or lose it" rule where the ownership of a domain that is just parked will be revoked when someone else would like to register it.
It is non-trivial to define "parked" in regards to a domain name in a way that is fair. I have 2 .com domains registered. One I've used since the price of a .com name was writing a justification memo to the InterNIC. I registered the other one in the late 90's when I thought I might want to migrate off the old one (complicated story) but I've never done so. My old registrar consideredd both of those domains "parked" simply because I didn't use their DNS servers for either of them, but in fact the old domai
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Oh, "registering a domain in order to treat it as a good to be sold", maybe with an added "especially when not making any real use in terms of running stuff like websites, mail, ssh, VPN, ..." seems like a good starter to me.
And in your case, I would suspect that - assuming your business is not selling domains - your (businesses') name or what you do and the domain name give clear evidence that you had no malicious intent.
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So what? That scheme would be obvious enough. They would have to come up with more complexity in the generated pages, register the domains to many different real people and so on. Maybe we'll have to add fines for "professional" parkers in the recipe.
OK, I admit that it's no sooo easy. But it would be a huge advancement to the situation now without being technically unrealistic.
And there is one thing I forgot: any abuse of domain tasting must be severely punished.
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I wouldn't be against the prices being raised back to former levels across all top level names. For those who have a legitimate use for the name, the cost is still not that high, but high enough to force squatters to rethink their approach.
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Apologies in advance; this is going to be harsh... It's called capitalism - supply and demand, scarcity, etc. The hippielove ideal of the internet is long gone. These days it's nothing for a company to spend $5k, $50k or more for a generic domain that drives traffic to their site. A single magazine spread can cost that much for a month. It's not squatting or anything else you want to label it, it really is investing in a valuable asset.
What you're really saying is that you're jealous you didn't registe
Re:It's not mined out. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that you have idiots accepting ridiculous amounts for worthless domains when the domain doesn't even matter anymore. I've been to many a site with a meaningless domain or a domain that is very long or a domain with a random tld and they've had no problem with traffic because they have a good website or provide something that people need.
People may not be paying (Score:5, Interesting)
The squatters may just think people will pay. Remember that for something like this to happen there doesn't have to be an actual worthwhile market, just the perception of one. You get all kinds of dumb, greedy, people who get in to shit.
A great example is back in the day when eBay was young and some domain squatters decided to buy up domains they thought might be worthwhile and try to sell them. So the funniest one I came across was a guy who had registered generalmills.cc and wanted to sell it for $10,000,000. That's right, ten million dollars. His sales pitch was you could buy it and then "Make them pay whatever you liked for the rights." Of course General Mills happily owned generalmills.com at the time and didn't seem to have an interest in others. What's more, a company can nab a domain name that is their trademark if they wish (these days through ICANN, back then through the courts). I e-mailed him calling him an idiot more or less and got one of the most caustic, hate filled responses defending his business claiming he made millions "regularly" on sales. I pointed out to him that he had no sales on eBay thus far, and got more hate in response.
It was quite clear that he though he'd got a brilliant scam, which was successful only in his own mind. He was just waiting for his big payday... Which of course never came.
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In some cases, it makes financial sense to pay some. I was looking to start a gun reviews site a while back, and had a $500 budget for a domain name. I found one - I think it was gunreviews.org - and sent them an email offering $500. I got an automated response that they would not be accepting any offers under $2,500.
Meawhile, something like "buyviagraonline.com" would be worth thousands.
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Wow, lol. This wasn't a month ago, and it was squatted. Purchased, and thanks!
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Yes, but most often that's in use, which is a different thing.
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By burned down buildings.
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A money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I loathe GoDaddy.com. Their commercials are downright offensive, their service is expensive crap, and I've known many people burned by them.
Having said that, I can't imagine that this is anything but a money grab by GoDaddy.com. When I read this, two thoughts came to mind.
First, they'll probably catch a lot of people who are not technically savvy enough to noticed that they're registering a .co instead of a .com. I know, how can someone be technically savvy enough to know they need a domain name and go through the process of registering it, but not know they need a .com? The easy answer is marketing goobs. Where I used to work, the marketing decided that .biz would be the next "hot" thing, and changed all of the company letter head, business cards, and ad copy to [company].biz, even though we still owned our .com name. It was a dismal failure, of course. We even got complaints from employees and customers because e-mails were bouncing due to spam systems and/or software that didn't recognize .biz as a legal address didn't work with our domain name. Eventually, the powers-that-be finally made the marketing department relent and they changed it back, but it was still an expensive, needless, unmitigated disaster.
Second, even for technically savvy people, if .co becomes a popular alternative, it's yet one more TLD that competent businesses will have to register. Any business worth its salt now has to register [company].com, [company].org, and [company].net. I run some hobby gaming sites, and even I register those three for my sites to make sure that no one tries to squat my site names. It seems painfully obvious to me that GoDaddy wants to add another TLD--and another $30 to their coffers for every domain name registered--by "legitimizing" .co domain names. If I were dumb enough to use them as a registrar, that means if I don't want someone squatting my site name, now I'll have to register [site].co as well. Worse, I really need to make double sure that I register that one because it's so easy to mistype .com as .co.
So no thank you. As far as I'm concerned, unless you run a business out of Bogotá, having a .co domain is like having a .biz domain--kind of stupid, and any non-Colombian business or organization that tries to use one instead of .com will be treated as fly-by-night by me, most likely a scammer or spammer.
Re:A money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
Small thing: many people don't even type in the domain name in full, with the TLD.
A *lot* of people type in “facebook” to go to facebook.com, or even “facebook login” to login to facebook, completely unaware of the magic that happens behind the scenes.
Do you remember what happened on that ReadWriteWeb article about Facebook's new login page ? The comments are unbelievable and yet. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php [readwriteweb.com]
Also, this is why Google knows that bit more about what sites people visit. Everytime people don't enter the TLD, their browser does a swift “I'm feeling lucky” search and takes them to the result.
So the .com vs .co problem might not be that much of an issue these days.
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Sheep? I take it you don't utilize any thermostats in the heating of your house? Shun automatic transmission?
For that matter, why not remember and write in IP in the browser bar?
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For that matter, why not remember and write in IP in the browser bar?
Flashbacks to SUN terminal rooms in college; having a notebook half-filled with IP addresses, passed from person to person, because only the CS grad students got printer time...good times.
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To get to slashdot.org (I don't use facebook), I hit Ctrl+T, then the letter s, then the right arrow key, then enter. Once you've been to a site once, you barely need to think at all these days.
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1) Send neural impulses to direct your right arm such that said arm is above the keyboard. You may, if you wish, separate your eyelids so that you might see when you are successful in this.
2) Send more neural impulses to move your thumb right over the key the light reflecting off of which forms the letters Ctrl upside down on your retina. Similarly move your pinky finger right over the key that looks like a T. Note that although pressing the key normally places a lowercase t on the screen, the key is still
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> browser does a swift “I'm feeling lucky” search
Umm... Maybe this changed, but the last time I checked, Firefox tries .com and a few other toplevels until one resolves.
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Actually, the reason Google knows that bit more about sites people visit, is that Firefox, Chrome and Safari all send each and every domain you visit to Google's Safebrowsing servers before they connect to it.
That is not how SafeBrowsing works. Firefox downloads a large database of hash prefixes. If the hashes of the domain and url are not in the list you go to the site and nothing is sent to Google. If the first bit of the hash matches an entry in the list Firefox asks Google for the list of complete hashes that start with that prefix. If the site's hash matches then you're blocked, if it doesn't you're not, but nothing more is sent.
To further obfuscate things, when Firefox finds a prefix match it doesn't just
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Here is proof, in the form of a registry desperatly trying and failing to get people to buy
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It's the manner in which the girls are selling domains.
I don't mind girls in commercials. Even sexy girls in commercials, if it's appropriate for the product. For example, beer, which is traditionally a "macho" drink, or Axe bodywash, or Victoria's Secret (who, contrary to common sense, are targeting their ads mainly at men that buy those sexy clothes for their girlfriends/wives).
GoDaddy's commercials pretty much tell me that they're positioning their services as a "macho" service, and it simply doesn't m
Re:It's not mined out. (Score:5, Informative)
Get rid of domain tasting
It's pretty much gone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting [wikipedia.org]
"ICANN reported in August 2009, that prior to implementing excess domain deletion charges, the peak month for domain tastings was over 15 million domain names. After the $0.20 fee was implemented, this dropped to around 2 million domain names per month. As a result of the further increase in charges for excess domain deletions, implemented starting April 2009, the number of domain tastings dropped to below 60 thousand per month."
I know from personal experience that a domain I had let lapse and was sat on for years became available again after the ICANN policy was put in place.
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Yes, its frustrating. I am trying to come with the a .com name and most of the a names are squatted (Registered but no website or godaddy.com website.)
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Yes, its frustrating. I am trying to come with the a .com name and most of the a names are squatted (Registered but no website or godaddy.com website.)
The web is not the internet. There are many more things to use a domain for than just a website.
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You're a good couple years behind. "Tasting" is long-dead.
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm [icann.org]
So now would you like to try again to regail us with your extensive insight into the domain name system, and the answers to all our problems?
.co for company ? (Score:4, Insightful)
are already in use as a company designator so why not ? but what about the collision with the Colombia state domain ?
Re:.co for company ? (Score:5, Funny)
...and .co.ck
(Cook Islands, really, look it up!)
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.co.uk
.co.jp
.co.nz
are already in use as a company designator so why not ? but what about the collision with the Colombia state domain ?
You don't like .co.co?
.co for phishing (Score:2)
It's pretty easy to pick out the "yourbank.leethaxors.com" and "batt13.net.com" spam. But with an appropriately formatted email, a link to "slashdot.co" might actually get some folks to click the link and log in to the phishing site.
-Rick
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In return, let Canadians use the ccTLD for Western Sahara [wikipedia.org].
The right question (Score:3, Insightful)
The question we should ask ourselves is whether or not we should accept domain name registration as a commercial practice. The moment we say 'yes' to this question, and it seems to me that this was the general answer since very early in the life of the DNS, we shouldn't neither be surprised nor shocked to see common commercial practices being used by these registrar.
If you buy the nice looking shirt for twice the price right at the entrance of the store, it's your problem I guess. But still, there's a difference. Most of us are aware of common commercial practice to lure clients into more expensive product. We sometimes choose to ignore or forget them, but we still are globally aware of them. But, somehow, we forget that similar rules apply to online businesses as well, probably due to the lack of personal interaction.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just so we are clear on that, I'm not suggesting anything. I honestly do not know the right answer to this complex question myself.
But I want to put emphasis on the point that I'm talking about the registration process of a domain name, not the actual websites behind theses names. I'm referring to the fact that registrars are commercial websites themselves, employing commercial tactics I would expect from every other commercial websites or store.
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Real eastate is an extremely good model for how the DNS system should be run.
In places with significant unused land (for our purposes preserves and protected wilderness would be considered used) it is often possible to obtain ownership of such land by simply claiming it, and using it. (Law varies by nation, but this still occurs, and was far more common in the past).
In all other cases you buy land from an existing holder.
Regardless of one one obtains the land though, one must still pay any property tax, or
Godaddy mistake? (Score:2, Interesting)
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I use Godaddy almost exclusively for my many (too many) domains... that said, let's be honest.
It's not a mistake. Their checkout process is designed to wave as many unnecessary - yet seemingly useful - options as possible in front of novice domain customers, in hopes that one or two will fall into their basket by mistake. No doubt their logs are full of new customers landing and searching for an unavailable .com domain, repeat, repeat, repeat, give up.
Now by defaulting to .co and hiding .com they can sell
Re:Godaddy mistake? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, no mistake. They were pushing this even before it became available for sale:
http://community.godaddy.com/godaddy/co-claim-your-opportunity/ [godaddy.com]
'Pre-registration is now open for the newest truly global and recognizable domain name extension to come along in years: .co -- It's used everywhere as an abbreviation for Company, Corporation, and Commerce. Let it vault your company into the global Internet marketplace!
Here's your chance to grab domain names that have been taken for years with the .com extension. Pre-registration includes application periods for trademark holders and others.'
garbage domains (Score:2, Insightful)
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.co is a country TLD. It's just misused, in largely the same was as .me, .nu, and many others.
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So is .tv, Tuvalu.
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What would you consider misuse of a country TLD? Domains are administrative boundaries. If you're ok with using a domain that is governed by the rules of a company or government in a foreign country, and you abide by their rules, then what is wrong with that?
Of course the entire top level domain thing is largely broken from today's point of view, because it's so US-centric. Non-country domains should be global. Country domains should be somehow related to that country.
What I mean is, if you go to porn.<country tld>, you should get porn site from that country, or at least content with "performers" who are mostly from that country, and advertising meant for that country, even for foreign web clients, because presumably they're planning a vacation or somethi
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What would you consider misuse of a country TLD? Domains are administrative boundaries. If you're ok with using a domain that is governed by the rules of a company or government in a foreign country, and you abide by their rules, then what is wrong with that?
Since I live in the US, not only am I OK with it, I see it as a significant benefit!
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Because many people who grab these domains don't understand what "their rules" are, or even that they are dealing with the rules of another country. They just think the TLD sounds cool. And the registrar (who doesn't want to lose a sale) doesn't do anything to explain it to them. Which leads to situations like this [arstechnica.com].
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Which leads to situations like this [arstechnica.com].
Or this [theregister.co.uk]
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country code tld's are supposed to represent sites in or at least related to that country. Misuse would be using them for sites that have nothing to do with that country.
Misusing cctlds particularly of unstable countries or ones ruled by a very different idiology to your own is a dangerous game. If the country decides they don't like your type or site or they don't like misuse in general there is little you can do about it. As someone has already pointed out registrars do nothing to explain this to their c
Let's call it scam when it is a scam (Score:3, Insightful)
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agreed. just another way for godaddy to profit from the clueless or too-lazy-to-read-what-they're-doing... which is a pretty large percentage of their customer base.
Regular business = scam (Score:2)
Re:Let's call it scam when it is a scam (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a scam to sell off .co domains as .com domains, and it should be outed as such by slashdot.
I smell lawsuit. Unwary and dumb users expect to have their hands held in this day and age.
.COM domain - .CO domains are from COlumbia!" you are automatically setting yourself up for a class-action suit which you will assuredly lose or settle.
.com price. In which case, we are the sheeple and will be eaten soon by the GoDragon.
This is a really uninformed error by the world's largest registrar. If you don't have a big blue banner that says "This is NOT a
But maybe the GoDaddy lawyers already figured out the cost of the suit, the settlement and the legal fees, and the 90% markup still leaves more on the table than an ultra-competitive
Fuck the ccTLDs anyway... (Score:2)
I saw the stupid Twitter-140-character-limit-moronity-mandated URL-shortened http://flic.kr/ [flic.kr] the other day, and I thought, the concept of ccTLDs are dead! Why not just use http://flickr/ [flickr] if you're going to do that.
Yeah, the Internet is getting stupider and stupider every second...
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Damn ACs, making all Americans look stupid and unworldly ;(
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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When a monopoly provides a service you desperately need, it's hard to stop them from milking you for all you're worth.
You have to maintain an internet presence these days, and failure to "keep with the times" may well jeopardize your ability to do business, hold down a job, and so on.
So you pay the piper.
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Considering how they and their competitors pull the same crap, I'd call it a de-facto cartel.
Public needs to learn not everyting is dot com (Score:2)
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"Domaining" may be on the way out. (Score:3, Interesting)
With the October 27th change to Google web search, "domaining" may be on the way out.
Google made huge changes when they merged "Google Places" (which is really Google business search") results into their main web search results. Search for DVD player [google.com]. There are almost no "organic search results" shown. At the top, there's "Related searches for dvd player - Brands, Stores, Types". There are two "organic" results from Amazon and Best Buy, both Google advertisers. Then a big block of "shopping results" A right side column of ads.
And that's a non-local search. On searches which imply some location ("london hotels" is a good test case), Google displays a map. For a few days, they displayed a big map in the main search area; today it's on the right, above the ads. Between the big ad block at the top, the map at the right, the ads below the the map, and the links in the main search area to the map, only a few organic results are squeezed in.
Google's organic search isn't any better than it used to be at filtering out the bottom-feeders. Down below the fold on "dvd player" search, there's still a result from "bestsoftware4download" (which tries a drive-by install of some .exe). In the "london hotels" search, there are a few junk entries. Most of the stuff visible on the first screen isn't organic search results, though. This makes "domaining" futile.
Google is still fooling around with their layout after their big change, and it hasn't settled yet. (Also, Google's layout changes if you're logged into Google and allow "personalization". The results mentioned above are not "personalized".) The trend, though, is clear. The primary results for a search with commercial intent now come from Google advertisers. Google is pushing advertisers to buy ads directly from Google, not from the "bottom feeders".
So buying up large numbers of ".co" domains may be futile. I expect we'll see many junk domains in ".com" expiring, with nobody picking them up.
ccTLDs are Not governed by ICANN Policies... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people, are not aware that country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) are NOT governed by ICANN policies.
ccTLDs are a whole different breed with their own unique rules and policies. The ccTLD delegated country, which in the case of .CO is the country of Columbia, has total control - the registrant has little to no recourse; ICANN likely can't help.
Most .CO registrants don't fully realize the risks with the biggest ones being:
* The country of Columbia could change policy at any time and take away many domains - it's happened many time before in numerous ccTLDs, including with .TM, such as Sex.TM, and even with .US as in the case of FuckCensorship.US that was retroactively deleted - google for more details.
* Can charge any price they want - so that .CO domain one registers for $29.95 today at GoDaddy could potentially cost far more in the future to renew; no rate caps nor restrictions on variable pricing - .CO can raise prices to whatever it wants anytime for all or selectively (ie. own a real nice .CO and you could be looking at a huge renewal bill; not unheard of either - read up on .TV variable pricing practices).
Bottom line is ccTLDs (.CO, .TV, .US, etc) are not the same as gTLDs (.COM, .NET, .ORG, etc). Buyer beware!
Ron
Not dissimilar to CentralNic's "country" .com/.co (Score:2)
15 years ago, CentralNic pulled a similar stunt with the .com domains - they went around and registered domains like uk.com, us.com, cn.com and ru.com and then brazenly sold subdomains off of those as if they were "top-level domains", completely with hefty charges (32.50 GBP per year for something.uk.com for example).
It ties in with this story too, because CentralNic have indeed registered uk.co and us.co as well, so I wonder when they'll try to "persuade" the publc that something.uk.co is a legit top-leve
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Go to flat namespace (Score:2)
Why do we even have root domains? Why not simply partition load by say the last few letters of the domain name. Reserve trademarks, proper names, and other forms of identity to their rightful owners - this way say a city can register a "root" domain and sell subdomains. Or a country. Or a DNS hotel like GoDaddy. Small organizations can register with whoever they wish as a subdomain, or run their own top level if they wish. Charge a flat fee per domain to recover load costs.
And get rid of the annoying
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Um, you don't know much about Colombia then. They have made significant advances in fighting the drug cartels. Maybe you are thinking about Mexico?
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Why yes, yes I am.