Be wary of vanity TLDs and even some country codes, they may be available but once the renewal rolls around and you've invested time and effort into establishing a presence there, you may be in for a price shock.
Which is an even worse problem than speculators. My domain was once held by some kind of speculator who wanted like $2kUfor it. I registered a .net instead. At some point they just dropped the .com domain, no idea why. Now I have the .com all to myself. Now that registrars are doing this, there's no way out.
It's always struck me as odd that TLDs are not just, well, freely configurable? Domains have always been subject to so much artificial scarcity for seemingly no reason. Why can't a DNS resolver handle .whatever?
The social fabric of the system would fall apart if people could trivially buy top level domains. Even the not so trivial buying that ICANN began in 2015 in order to profiteer was a serious mistake (to everyone besides ICANN).
it would be a global first come first serve namespace. Everything conceivable would be registered. Only the diversity of TLDs and SLDs saves the current DNS from this. In fact ICANN's money-grubbing TLD spam actually improved this, since there are now far too many TLDs to squat them all.
This wouldn’t really reduce the scarcity though. Right now everyone wants a “.com”, because it’s the convention. If you could buy the TLD “widget” for the same price as “widget.com”, then you would just move up one level in the domain hierarchy and have the same scarcity? If anything, the fact that there are several legitimate TLD options reduces the scarcity a tiny bit?
As an aside (I’m also annoyed by domain squatters etc), it is a fascinating market study how domains are artificially scarce the way they are when everyone can easily and cheaply buy them. I am not sure there is any reasonable solution to it.
Maybe it's useful for ICANN to delegate management to different orgs (mostly corporations) so they don't have to control every single website on earth directly
I would actually prefer for the ICANN to have even less power and for the whole system to be even more distributed
What we should have is a root zone consisting only of country codes, and technical TLDs like .arpa, and no central authority on this file. It should be reasonable enough to get consensus on who runs the DNS root for each country. These don't change too frequently. And then each country can do whatever it wants inside its own TLD.
The problem is the US is grandfathered in without staying inside its TLD. This was manageable when it was just .com .org .net etc. but now ICANN has abused this position to mint thousands of new US TLDs outside of .us. If they were inside .us this would only be a problem for whoever runs .us but because they are top-level it makes it difficult to have a decentralised root zone and not just rely on what ICANN publishes. Which is part of the point I'm sure.
I never heard of OpenNIC before! Cool project. I wonder how complicated would it be for a layperson like me to have my website work on OpenNIC and regular DNS at the same time
Not sure it's possible because dotCom is owned by verisign and designated to the internet root servers. Your ISP, ISP Peering DNS, and any other DNS service would override any of your DNS zones.
It does make me wonder if I hosted my own root servers for a new dotCom tld would I get chased down by the internet police?
No, there's no internet police who would stop you from doing that. However you had better point your .com to Verisign's .com or so many things won't work when connected to your DNS server. Also you will never get IANA to recognise you as the new authority for .com which means people will need to go out of their way to use your root zone instead of the de-facto-standard one published by IANA.
It's a bit like signing your website certificate with your own root certificate. The protocol itself is agnostic to who issues the root certificates, but good luck convincing distros to install yours by default, so your website will only be accessible by people who go far out of their way to install it.
It's a shame, because ICANN being under US jurisdiction is effectively an attack against the DNS.
> It's a shame, because ICANN being under US jurisdiction is effectively an attack against the DNS.
Agreed. At least in 2016 we got the US to give up its veto power to the PTI which has global oversight. Still ofc the ICANN is just another company based in Los Angeles and falls under California and US legal jurisdiction. I would much prefer control be transferred to the UN ITU
What's odd is there seems to be no viable alternatives to DNS at all. Everybody just standardized on this ancient phone book technology managed by some rent seeking "assigned numbers" organization and now there is no escape from it.
These are fun but regular people have so much difficulty with them.
I once snagged a 4 letter .net address that was the last 3 letters of my first name with the first initial of my last name as the last character.
I thought I was so clever. I had the shortest email address you could ever imagine and it was basically just my first name and last initial. Amazing!
Nobody got it. It was confusing. I got blank stares and confused looks. People basically refused to email me at my new address.
Sometimes long is better, and sometimes unique and easy to spell is better, too.
Examples like Pinterest or Expedia are good demonstrators. They are easy to spell when you hear the word, and they were unique words that at the time were obviously going be available. Sure, Expedia is a very old domain, but if the company didn’t exist today I’d almost guarantee you a new company looking to buy the domain would be able to find it in 2026.
Ya, I have an .st domain with is <my-first-name>@<first-three-letters-of-last-name>.st and I've had a few people have a lot of trouble with it. With one, it took about 6 or 7 tries to explain it to him before I just took over and typed it for him. Most people do get it, though, and sometimes think it's neat.
Very true, I found a similar issue with vanity/hack domains too. Picked up https://jo.hn a couple of years ago and the confusion it causes isn't really worth the cool-factor most of the time!
They tend to really just be suitable as a supplementary domain for short links and the like (youtu.be, goo.gl, etc.)
i have a 3-letter .onl domain that is the first 3 letters of my last name
I have actually needed to use it, because my cell provider (Visible) has absolutely moronic form validation that doesn't recognize a hyphen as a valid character in an email address, even though it very much is. (My main .net domain has a hyphen in it)
You could've found an EU person to hold the domains for you btw.
Regardless, it's usually politically safest to put your domains under your own country's ccTLD. That way, you're exposed to one fewer country's dumb politics.
dot org is right there and is at least run by a non profit. The SAVE .ORG campaign succeeded in preventing private equity from buying it out. Thanks to EFF, Wikipedia, NPR, Greenpeace, the YMCA, and even the Girl Scouts!
Be wary of vanity TLDs and even some country codes, they may be available but once the renewal rolls around and you've invested time and effort into establishing a presence there, you may be in for a price shock.
You're also subject to US law on anything that isn't a ccTLD and even several ccTLDs.
"cod.ing" ... available!?
Someone just dropped their registration for that today!?
Namecheap...
Hurry...
Login, come on...
TOTP, uagh...
Come on, come on... register, register...
...
$39,000.00 !??!
"Premium" name?!
What is this garbage?
>What is this garbage?
Registries realized they can capture the value from premium domains rather than letting domain speculators profit.
Which is an even worse problem than speculators. My domain was once held by some kind of speculator who wanted like $2kUfor it. I registered a .net instead. At some point they just dropped the .com domain, no idea why. Now I have the .com all to myself. Now that registrars are doing this, there's no way out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack
It's always struck me as odd that TLDs are not just, well, freely configurable? Domains have always been subject to so much artificial scarcity for seemingly no reason. Why can't a DNS resolver handle .whatever?
The social fabric of the system would fall apart if people could trivially buy top level domains. Even the not so trivial buying that ICANN began in 2015 in order to profiteer was a serious mistake (to everyone besides ICANN).
it would be a global first come first serve namespace. Everything conceivable would be registered. Only the diversity of TLDs and SLDs saves the current DNS from this. In fact ICANN's money-grubbing TLD spam actually improved this, since there are now far too many TLDs to squat them all.
This wouldn’t really reduce the scarcity though. Right now everyone wants a “.com”, because it’s the convention. If you could buy the TLD “widget” for the same price as “widget.com”, then you would just move up one level in the domain hierarchy and have the same scarcity? If anything, the fact that there are several legitimate TLD options reduces the scarcity a tiny bit?
As an aside (I’m also annoyed by domain squatters etc), it is a fascinating market study how domains are artificially scarce the way they are when everyone can easily and cheaply buy them. I am not sure there is any reasonable solution to it.
Maybe it's useful for ICANN to delegate management to different orgs (mostly corporations) so they don't have to control every single website on earth directly
I would actually prefer for the ICANN to have even less power and for the whole system to be even more distributed
What we should have is a root zone consisting only of country codes, and technical TLDs like .arpa, and no central authority on this file. It should be reasonable enough to get consensus on who runs the DNS root for each country. These don't change too frequently. And then each country can do whatever it wants inside its own TLD.
The problem is the US is grandfathered in without staying inside its TLD. This was manageable when it was just .com .org .net etc. but now ICANN has abused this position to mint thousands of new US TLDs outside of .us. If they were inside .us this would only be a problem for whoever runs .us but because they are top-level it makes it difficult to have a decentralised root zone and not just rely on what ICANN publishes. Which is part of the point I'm sure.
It can, you just need to pay $210,000 to buy that TLD.
I thought they were auctioned?
Hmm okay to rephrase my question, why are ICANN such money grubbing assholes? Is it a political thing?
The boring answer is that infrastructure costs money.
You either use taxes from everyone to pay for it or you take money from the people using the thing.
it's like Wikipedia begging for money saying they don't have enough
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... btw
Don't give them money until they stop wasting what they have, and chastise them for begging so hard.
Because they can; it's a racket. Like paid SSL certificates, all of it is corporate greed.
One solution is running your own DNS servers. This way you can list your own TLD's. However good luck in convincing others to change their DNS.
Obligatory shout-out to OpenNIC: https://servers.opennic.org/
I never heard of OpenNIC before! Cool project. I wonder how complicated would it be for a layperson like me to have my website work on OpenNIC and regular DNS at the same time
Not sure it's possible because dotCom is owned by verisign and designated to the internet root servers. Your ISP, ISP Peering DNS, and any other DNS service would override any of your DNS zones.
It does make me wonder if I hosted my own root servers for a new dotCom tld would I get chased down by the internet police?
No, there's no internet police who would stop you from doing that. However you had better point your .com to Verisign's .com or so many things won't work when connected to your DNS server. Also you will never get IANA to recognise you as the new authority for .com which means people will need to go out of their way to use your root zone instead of the de-facto-standard one published by IANA.
It's a bit like signing your website certificate with your own root certificate. The protocol itself is agnostic to who issues the root certificates, but good luck convincing distros to install yours by default, so your website will only be accessible by people who go far out of their way to install it.
It's a shame, because ICANN being under US jurisdiction is effectively an attack against the DNS.
> It's a shame, because ICANN being under US jurisdiction is effectively an attack against the DNS.
Agreed. At least in 2016 we got the US to give up its veto power to the PTI which has global oversight. Still ofc the ICANN is just another company based in Los Angeles and falls under California and US legal jurisdiction. I would much prefer control be transferred to the UN ITU
I tried to join OpenNIC once but, like many such small informal organisations, the ingroup dynamics are quite toxic.
What's odd is there seems to be no viable alternatives to DNS at all. Everybody just standardized on this ancient phone book technology managed by some rent seeking "assigned numbers" organization and now there is no escape from it.
It can. You just have to abandon ICANN's.
The reason is money
These are fun but regular people have so much difficulty with them.
I once snagged a 4 letter .net address that was the last 3 letters of my first name with the first initial of my last name as the last character.
I thought I was so clever. I had the shortest email address you could ever imagine and it was basically just my first name and last initial. Amazing!
Nobody got it. It was confusing. I got blank stares and confused looks. People basically refused to email me at my new address.
Sometimes long is better, and sometimes unique and easy to spell is better, too.
Examples like Pinterest or Expedia are good demonstrators. They are easy to spell when you hear the word, and they were unique words that at the time were obviously going be available. Sure, Expedia is a very old domain, but if the company didn’t exist today I’d almost guarantee you a new company looking to buy the domain would be able to find it in 2026.
Ya, I have an .st domain with is <my-first-name>@<first-three-letters-of-last-name>.st and I've had a few people have a lot of trouble with it. With one, it took about 6 or 7 tries to explain it to him before I just took over and typed it for him. Most people do get it, though, and sometimes think it's neat.
Very true, I found a similar issue with vanity/hack domains too. Picked up https://jo.hn a couple of years ago and the confusion it causes isn't really worth the cool-factor most of the time!
They tend to really just be suitable as a supplementary domain for short links and the like (youtu.be, goo.gl, etc.)
I have even had people confused at [last name].io even though tech industry folks consider that one really common.
I can see why many companies end up paying lots of money to transition over to .com when they get to a certain size.
i have a 3-letter .onl domain that is the first 3 letters of my last name
I have actually needed to use it, because my cell provider (Visible) has absolutely moronic form validation that doesn't recognize a hyphen as a valid character in an email address, even though it very much is. (My main .net domain has a hyphen in it)
An impressively busy UI for such low information density.
I went with
https://meltd.ooo/wn
for my little NFT project
haha, that's one of the best web animation I've seen. Nice job. Love how interactive it is
Tried until I ran out of 'dissections' with zero results on known good domains..
It seems like it just matches a list of precomputed entries, but does no actual operation of the user input.
there s always a .com with some imagination
And if you find one as available, book it and pay it immediately.
lots of good ones still
Thanks to Brexit, I lost my .eu domains. This really pissed me off.
Maybe it's a good thing we are all afraid to visit any other tld other than dotCom.
You could've found an EU person to hold the domains for you btw.
Regardless, it's usually politically safest to put your domains under your own country's ccTLD. That way, you're exposed to one fewer country's dumb politics.
> you're exposed to one fewer country's dumb politics.
That would be .co.uk, so, jail time for hosting memes.
except if you choose to move, change nationalities, or the government suddenly doesn't like you
dot org is right there and is at least run by a non profit. The SAVE .ORG campaign succeeded in preventing private equity from buying it out. Thanks to EFF, Wikipedia, NPR, Greenpeace, the YMCA, and even the Girl Scouts!
Yikes, must have missed that one. Horrifying thought.
I'm surprised that "AI" right inside most search engines these days was not the final nail in the coffin of domain importance, and specifically .com
browsers hiding most of the URL also negated much of the importance and was a nail
QR codes on everything and all phones in everyone's hands all the time was another nail
You just don't want a scammy TLD but not even sure what those are these days anymore