Other considerations (Score 2, Insightful)

1. Type-in traffic: If the domain is a naturally descriptive phrase - MiamiHotels.com - you will benefit from steady type-in traffic. For every type-in visitor, and they can be considerable in a world of 100s of millions who are online - that's one less click you have to pay for via AdWords, etc. 2. Type-in traffic II: If the domain has a baseline of traffic you will have an "insurance policy" against search engine results volatility, that is, one day you rank and the next day you tank in the search engine. 3. Memorability as brandability: What's branding about? Lots of things, but foremost you want to be remembered - by association. Which is the easier path to remembrance: BostonPlumber.com or BobsPlumbingServicesLLC.com? My vote is on . . . (I'm sure you can guess). 4. If you follow 1-3 then you can see that certain domain names have inherent value and some people were savvy enough (and old enough = had a credit card at the time) to register some pretty neat domain names. Chances are, if you (the naysayers) had the chance and the foresight, you likely would have registered a few yourself. Of course, the purists never would have done that as they knew some day Google would love them and their website - briefly - until the latest algo change. 5. SEO as the alternative remedy? Ya, like that's going to work for the long haul. Especially when everyone and their brother is playing the same game and the search engines are hard at work in an effort to make SEO irrelevant. 6. Overpriced? Inflated? So what? Don't get your shorts all bunched up in a knot. If it makes you feel that you have greater meaning in this world - that you have STRONG opinions - great. OTOH, feel free to devote that energy and attention to something that might really matter. If the guy/gal holding the domain is a bum then a bum's karma will be their lot. Why make your karmic lot that of the whiner, the self-righteous, the judge? Move on. Somebody holds a domain for a cruddy little links page. You got time for that as an issue? (Just kidding, of course, on this point. You can labor about whatever gets you torqued. :-P ) 7. OMG - They're doing nothing with the domain! It's parked! Ummmm, ya, but if you notice there's a lot going on in the parking industry. More and more they're turning those domain names into mini-portals. Almost as good as 791/2% of the domains that are actually developed, at least in terms of delivering something that the casual user might find useful. Truth is, it either gets down to a business decision or a moral/ethical/political issue. I cannot recommend too many political issues for a business, as there is ultimately no answer that will work for everyone, across all ethnicities, religions, cultures, etc. Not to say it's not a legitimate area of focus, just that if one labors to make the politically correct decision on all possible issues chances are that one will never get down to the business of doing business. That's not bad if mom and day are paying the bills, but those days are numbered. Choose the domain name and pay the price if the domain name has some traffic, is easily brandable, is memorable, works nicely on business cards and letterhead and bills, AND it's worth it to you for those and other business reasons.