Domain names are a limited resource, somewhat analogous to real estate in that there are areas that are popular and areas that are not. So right now everyone wants to live in Hong Kong and everyone thinks they have a right to do so for the same price it costs them to live wherever they are now.

With domain this makes sense because there is no real issues like with real estate. There is no one who is going to have to move to another country instead of staying close to their family, so there is no push for rent controls or bans on foreign ownership. So the actual issue of a domain name is purely a matter of arbitrary convenience.

This becomes more so as we expand the TLDs. And more so, as in this case, where the owner is just casually using a domain. It is no so much a matter of millions of dollars of good will, but of exploiting the resource period. I would also say that you do not buy a domain so much as rent it. This is why I suggest to my clients that they rent/buy the domain for the longest time possible.

I think this is question is a result of either a high level of paranoia or the realization by the poster that domain name squatting is not the business it used to be. If this is a typosquatted domain, and it is a primary email address, then get another email address. If it a serious domain, get some content on it.

"using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem"

Sounds like a drunken data orgy with the NSA.

I'm not a "troll", I'm an Agitation Engineer.
   

I think we all appreciate that this person went to b-school and therefore is well trained in using buzz words and maximizing quarterly profits, but Google works because unlike most other dot coms, it does deliver products to generate a profit, not just data that one day may be used for a profit.

At the time when Google was on the rise, web browsers began to let user manage 'cookies'. This was a new concept to everyone back then, but web companies were learning to use cookies to track users, and end users were learning to turn them off to protect privacy. Companies like 2o7, which thought they could win by obfuscating their domain name, were driven into oblivion by companies like Google who were making a much fairer trade. Google provided a service for data collection, that first service being the search App, and in return they got user data which could be used to build an ad service business.

To be honest Google search now sucks and any actual consumer products are too expensive to provide any value. Like MS, google end user products are only affordable because the manufacturers take a hit on profits. This is why Apple has only a small share of the mobile phone market, but most of the profits.

So at the end of the day, all Google has is the apps. And the killer app, google docs, has not been updated in a long time. Maps has credible competitors. Bing under new owners could be a player, which it wasn't with MS because it was just a small cog in huge machine. Google can be forgiven because it provides descent products for no cost, even if those products are crappy. It is like broadcast TV. People will watch it, and maybe buy some of the stuff in the ads, because what else is there to do?

But Google without apps, with only search, is going to be highly vulnerable. At some point someone is going to figure a way to compete with Google, and if all Google has to back up ads is search, they are going to be easy pickings.

Crappiness can be done cheaper overseas.

Quick! Hide it before they use it to generate H-1B targeting resumes having impossible combo's of skills to filter away citizens.

Perhaps the whole idea of automatic tagging should be scrapped.

We can finally visit our "cloud servers" while there

hot enough so that the longest any spacecraft functioned on the surface was mere seconds;

The Soviet landers lasted more than a half hour. But they did require massive cooling systems.

That is exactly why the stickers are gone, IMHO too. It is rather easy to find XP Pro/Home stickers. Vista stickers happen occasionally. 7 stickers are rare though in residentials dumpsters.

I don't dumpster dive much more these days, it's not worth the effort.

Here for example... I ordered licenses there, they work and from what I gather it is legal (enough) in the EU.

What else do they need all that nuclear equipment for? There are other ways to generate nuclear power without that kind of material.

Seems MS and Facebook should then make a mutual search deal. You gotta pool resources to compete with Google in search-land.

MS is the grandaddy of the computer phone like device, having supported the enhanced phone since at least 2000. These devices have never sold, well, and presumably never made any significant profit. If MS did not quit the market after the KIN, nothing will stop them. Especially now that they have created an OS designed to make their users suffer. Windows 10 appears to continue the notion that in the not too distant future every person will be on a tablet, not on what we consider a computer today. And it makes sense because most of the world are going is going to be using a phone with a screen less than 10" as a computer in the near future. If MS alienates it's traditional high volume user base, and is not able to get a phone out, then where is the money going to come from? Not from the few respectability users that need MS products to run specialty verticle market applications.

In the US these military projects are the primary method for conservatives to get pork into their district. No conservative is going to vote against wasting money on useless weapon systems. To be honest, not all of the money is wasted. Some of this money goes into basic research that results in actually useful technology that helps the US in long term competitiveness. Some of it keeps important firms from bankruptcy, firms we need for national security. But I think this could be done much more efficiently through well overseen civilian programs. To be further honest the pork here is bipartisan. While almost every states in the union get some of the money, most of it appears to go to Texas and California.And of course the executives a Lockheed-Martin are not going to continue the bribes to congress if they is no longer a program. And the jobs at the pentagon are going to be lost if there is no longer a jobs program to manage.