In the end
Investing in domains is a viable business (excluding spammers, typos) and building up a large network of websites from those domains is no different from investing in speculative real estate or fine art.
Gov, com, edu etc are essential and geo/ country domains are also required due to the recent localization of search. Who uses
Some new tld will be solid for large niches in the internet (.porn,
It's not just Indians and Chinese 'sea turtles' going back overseas.... I have no background in China, born a Canadian of European background and spent the past 5 years in Beijing. Found thousands of Canadians and Yanks just like myself living in China. Who are these people? Most are highly ambitious entrepreneurs from good families that are searching for the new wild west, the land of opportunity. They could easily stay and work in the US but some of (maybe lots of) todays youth are not happy working in mega corporations who don't give a shit about their employees, long hours, little recognition/room for advancement, no loyalty, etc...
By many China is seen as the new wild west with new opportunities, challenges, and a sense of adventure that can't be found back home. One billion people where everyone needs new products and ideas. At least that's what the new expats believe. Easy road to riches... but that's not the case. I never met anyone over in Beijing that made a fortune off of China except the expats on big overseas packages. Most small foreign start ups are loosing or breaking even... and as a foreigner in China your chances of success are severely crippled because of your lack of Guanxi.
Benefits of living in China: Cheap cost of living, nice modern apartments with all the amenities (pools, gyms, squash, etc), extremely safe, maids, cooks, drivers, cheap taxis, new restaurants opening every day with fanatical service, rapidly expanding nightlife, modern architecture that puts most US cities to shame, cheap shopping, ability to grab weekend vacation flights around Asia for cheap, holidays like the Chinese new year with all the fireworks are amazing, etc. It is possible to live very well on $1-1500/month. Most foreigners just out of university get by on significantly less. Overall there is a great sense of adventure in daily life, nothing is routine.
Disadvantages: pollution!
Why did I leave China? Got fed up with the quality of life and lack of opportunities in China. Also there was some Chinese government visa changes. When I left about half of my friends were also planning on leaving. Lots of expats were planning on moving their business out of the country to places such as India or finding work in Dubai or elsewhere in Asia.
US is not the land of opportunity it once was. The bush era has left a bad taste in everyones mouth and it will take a long time to get over. Where are all the opportunities in the US if there's no commons (manufacturing, R&D, etc) in things like solar, electric cars, electronics, etc? The US needs to keep these hubs of innovation in the US or the talent will keep going overseas.
She is a university student in Argentina (not exactly a third world country) and the Canadian government requires sufficient proof that she will be returning to Argentina (understandable).
Proof = original bank statements, letter from employer, property titles, etc. Or I could sponsor her, which I tried to do... but then they started asking me show original bank statements, property titles, etc. Think this is a huge invasion of a persons privacy asking for so much detailed info.
If a person from Canada or the US had to supply this amount of info just for a tourist visa nobody would travel.
Sure Canada has high immigration (full time residents)... but probably not tourist numbers due to the complexities and invasion of peoples privacy.
Don't think so...
Now living in Costa Rica and wanted to take my girlfriend to NY and Vancouver. US was relatively easy to get her a visa. Canada was not... they required original bank statements, property titles, etc... so she didn't get a visa. Ridiculous! I'm Canadian and ashamed of our visa policy.
Both these countries got the Olympics with very bad visa policies... Maybe US visa policy is brought up to cover the other problems such as the US shrinking international reputation...
I'm been trying out Bing for the past month and prefer their results. I have to wonder if Google timed this new update because of the focus Bing is getting? Google thrives on media attention and this release puts the webmaster focus back on them.
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Google results are not as clean and relevant as they once were...some result pages show video, news (plus it's irrelevant news most of the time), and some domains have sub domain search results. What happened to clean page results?
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Also one of the main reasons I'm switching to Bing is because Google always pushes local results. I'm living in Costa Rica and have no interest in local spanish search results (yes when I type in English in Google some/half of the results come back in Spanish). For 90% of my searches I am after authority world results...not crappy local Costa Rica results. I would like to set my search results to Google International but can not (yes I can type 'Google.com international' in the search bar but why can't I permanently set my Google page to international?. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Chinese people will very rarely say anything bad about the government for fear of consequences so these stats make sense.
Take my girlfriend for example (we live in Beijing) she's far more open to outside influences than most Chinese. Was talking to her about starting a blog to protest the new Chinese visa regulations for foreigners. Her response...please don't because the Chinese government will punish me if they find out I live with someone who does this. Like most people in any country she does not like to hear bad things about the Chinese government. Part of it is the old Confusion ideology and ancestor worship...what is done by those above must be respected.
She is educated but still has no idea of what censorship is and what is censored in China. Believe me I have tried and showed her info about the 3T's, human rights, etc... but her response is that western media is publishing this and they are not to be trusted as much as the Chinese press. Truth is most Chinese do not understand what censorship is and will not learn about it from foreigners or foreign media. China is booming and the people in cities with influence are happy, they do not want change.
From a westerners point of view it would be nice to find a happy medium between Chinese media and western media. Every time I go back to Canada the news is full of gloom and doom. It may be free media but I find it kind of depressing. Meanwhile in China it's an absolute joke and everything is 'good'. Was reading on the main page of a newspaper the other day about an old man who helped society by trying for years to stop a tree from falling over. Every day he would go out and try and push the tree straight...ridiculous stuff. The earthquake would be on 24 hours a day if it happened in the US. Meanwhile I'm working in front of the TV and find it hard to find any news about the earthquake. Chinese media is filled with feel good stories. Why can't there be a middle ground?
To do nothing is to be nothing.