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The Internet

Amazon Becomes Domain Name Registrar 159

Posted by timothy from the one-click-bwahahaha dept.
prostoalex writes "Internet's largest retailer is setting up a domain name registration business. Wall Street Journal recently found out that in December Amazon.com got approved as domain name registrar. According to people from ICANN, the registration included rights for .com, .net,. org, .biz and .info TLDs."
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Amazon Becomes Domain Name Registrar More

Amazon Becomes Domain Name Registrar

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  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • New Patent! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:48PM (#5415920)
    Time for Bezos to patent the method of registering a domain.

  • It will be good for innovation. (Score:5, Funny)

    by m_chan ( 95943 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:48PM (#5415921) Homepage
    Now Jeff Bezos can patent one-click domain squatting.

  • can't wait to see the patents (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:48PM (#5415922)
    So, what kind of patent BS will they milk out of this one?

    One great thing about boycotting internet retailers like Amazon.com : you can shop there, read reviews, compare models, pick out what you want .. then buy it someplace else with a few clicks [note: more than one click, don't sue me]!
    • You should patent that process of buying things.

      The process of:
      1> Using Amazon to search for things you want to buy.
      2> Buying from a different site.

      Hrmm.. I bet this could come in handy with other things as well... I bet nobody does this with travel sites either :).
    • Or you can just take it out from the library! Ultimate try-before-you-buy. The Amazon quality rating system is the best for picking out the best books on a given subject, when you can then proceed to borrow from the library.

  • How long until... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by abh ( 22332 )
    How long until Amazon finds a way to patent domain registrations?

  • Check out this report. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Deal-a-Neil ( 166508 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:48PM (#5415925) Homepage Journal
    Monthly Report (Oct 2002) [icann.org] for all ICANN registrars. Weird this /. article just made it because I was just reading this report. Shows a LOT of information about registrars, their SLAs, and even their registration statistics. Of course, Netsol, Tucows, Enom, Bulkregister, and MelbourneIT are stompin', but it will be interesting to track Amazon's progress since they're starting from scratch.

  • And in other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by ClippyHater ( 638515 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:49PM (#5415926) Journal
    Amazon patents the process of using human-readable names to alias network addresses of computers on the internet.
  • Of course they get you when you search to see if your domain is availible. You must pay the $1000 licence fee each time because they patented the process of entering data into a field and hitting a button to search for availible domains which might or might not be availible for purchase.

  • Low margin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:49PM (#5415928)
    With all the recent competition this became such a low margin business. I wonder what amazon expects to get from it...

    • Re:Low margin (Score:5, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:58PM (#5415969)
      A vast improvement, since most of their business is based on a model of working at a negative margin and making it up in volume. You can believe it or not, but I'm not making that up. The orginal idea was to take large losses over a period of years but make it up in volume later on when you had become the biggest player in the field. It's not an umcommon stratagy, and sometimes it even works, but when it doesn't. . .

      That's why they keep adding products to their line, To offset the losses the previous line racked up.

      So a line with *any* profit margin at all will be a valuable thing to have come the next stockholder's meeting.

      KFG

      • Re:Low margin (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:47PM (#5416148) Homepage
        So a line with *any* profit margin at all will be a valuable thing to have come the next stockholder's meeting.

        If only the could have one of those... Amazon just sold $1.43 billion in merchandise last Xmas, and couldn't get 0.25% of that in true profits...

        This means that as far as businesses are concerned, your savings account is a more successful business model than "man of the year" Bezos' Amazon.

        • Re:Low margin (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LostCluster ( 625375 )
          Yeah, but Amazon.com's stock actually went up during 2002 from 14.48 to 18.89. There's a 33% return on investment!

          See, Amazon isn't a blue chip that decares its profits and then hands it out as dividends. Instead, it invests its profits from profitable lines back into expanding the business. The expansions so far have been mostly sucessful, so they contribute to the value of the company which gets measured in the stock price.

          Bottom-line profit is an important metric, but it isn't the only one.
          • Ack... wrong start-of-2002 stock price... the correct stat is 10.96 at the start of 2002, 18.89 at the end of it.
          • See, Amazon isn't a blue chip that decares its profits and then hands it out as dividends. Instead, it invests its profits from profitable lines back into expanding the business.

            Except, of course, they don't have any profits. They've had 2 profitable quarters so far, a few that were 'pro forma' profitable, and the rest couldn't be cooked to profitability. Amazon has survived from venture capital, an IPO, and loans, not rom reinvesting profits.

            Stock price valuation is a funny thing, though. In theory, it should reflect future profits. But the last few years were like a freshman college chick binge drinking to excess, having he time of her life, then vomiting on herself, getting gang banged, and ending up with her head in the toilet wishing she could die.

          • stock prices are not a reflection of a company's true value. Stock prices are a reflection of the demand for that stock. Amazon is a great example of why you're wrong. What was their stock price in 1999? Start at near $100 and cross that line twice. in 2000? A steady decline from around $100 to almost as low as it was at the beginning of 2002. And now you're gonna say that their $9 gain last year shows the company's value?

            stock prices show the value of the company's stock as measured by demand for that stock, not the value of the company.

      • Re:Low margin (Score:5, Funny)

        by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:55PM (#5416168)
        Actually, it's a "Rinse. Wash. Repeat." process. (It's hard to explain this concept on a geek-friendly site, since so many programmers each year have to be rescued from showers after getting caught in that infinite loop on the shampoo bottle.)

        As older divisions turn profitable, they are funneling most of those profits into setting up new businesses on their site so that they can repeat and profit again. The result is that the overall operation is hovering around break even, but the value of the stock should theoretically increase because it now represents a bigger company. (Actual stock milage will vary due to the the external factors that send the whole stock market spinning at times.)

        Look at Microsoft's breakdowns when they have to file their paperwork. Their domanant businesses of Windows and Office are profitable, but then Microsoft turns around and spends money trying to break into the businesses that it doesn't dominate such as its MSN web properties. Still profitable, but how much more profitable would they be if they gave up the ghost on MSN?

        • Re:Low margin (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by kfg ( 145172 )
          Believe it or not, geeks can add. Why, they can not only balance their own checkbooks but even perform complex statistical and financial calculations far beyond the reach of most bank managers.

          Some of them have even proven quite successful in founding and managing complex multinational corporations while amassing millions, yea, even billions, in personal wealth.

          Who would have thought that of independent intelligent people good with abstract concepts, math and technology.

          Lord, we all expected the football players with D averages to to rule the business world by now.

          Oh, wait, those were the venture capitalists the smart people raped of their fortunes.

          Go figure.

          I'm familiar with concept of using profits to fund expansion. I've even successfully applied it myself.

          Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places but I've certainly seen no evidence of this in Amazon.

          What I have seen is a man who has, repeatedly, gone to the venture capitalists and stockholders and said, "Sure, we're losing money, but if we had more capital to expand eventually we'll be the big boy on the block and profit."

          Rinse and repeat.

          KFG
        • I got a runtime error when trying to execute "Rinse. Wash. Repeat.". The message was
          Rinse: Invalid hair state - hair not yet washed at line 1
          Any help appreciated.
      • most of their business is based on a model of working at a negative margin and making it up in volume.

        If you're making a loss on every unit, then the more you sell, the more you lose! "Making it up on volume" just puts you out of business the quicker.

        What Amazon are doing is trying to become the "one stop shop". If you want anything, go to Amazon to buy it, and because you trust them (because they've always delivered in the past) it is easier for you to just click "buy now" than go hunting for a better price elsewhere, especially if the choice is dealing with half-a-dozen different suppliers, or just one. When they've got that - and they probably have by now for books, CDs and DVDs - then they can start to make a margin.

        Amazon want to be to retailing what Google is to search. If you listen to idiot Slashbots, you would think that all Amazon did was issue patents, but the fact is their execution is superb. Order from them, and it'll show up when they say it will, and if it doesn't, they'll replace it or refund you some money. They're in a completely different league from the typical dotcom.
    • With all the recent competition this became such a low margin business. I wonder what amazon expects to get from it...

      Eyeballs, of course! Go look through the Amazon SEC filings and other places... they get a lot of revenue from the little ads they sprinkle around their site. Even if this just breaks even, there will be that many more people cruising around their site, looking at ads they get paid for. Heck, some of those people might even buy something!

  • Already taken... (Score:4, Funny)

    by davidstrauss ( 544062 ) <david.davidstrauss@net> on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:49PM (#5415930)
    It turns out amazon.com is reported as already taken.

  • It wont be long until.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by burrfux ( 654443 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:50PM (#5415931)
    we see this on amazon: Get STY networking in 24 hours + A DOMAIN OF YOUR CHOICE! Step right up, it's yours for $29.95!

  • I can see it now.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by loucura! ( 247834 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:53PM (#5415943)
    In light of becoming a registrar, Amazon is going to patent no-click domain registration.

    And then muscle everyone out of business even Verisign!

    Sad thing is, I'm not sure which is worse.
    • That's one of the funniest things I have read on Slashdot in a long time! Very clever and topical!
    • Ohh dear...

      Verisign/NSI is worse. Alot lot lot worse.

      Amazon.com is a blessing incomparison !

      The utter fucking shit i had to deal with that is NSI... its unbelieveable....

      They are the scum of the universe!

      D.

  • Recommendations (Score:5, Funny)

    by jackal! ( 88105 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:54PM (#5415947) Homepage
    Recommendations will be particularaly helpful:

    "People who registered "cowsex.org" also registered: "grandmasex.org" "verbalsex.net" and "mbate.org"

  • More power to them... (Score:5, Funny)

    by UsonianAutomatic ( 236235 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:54PM (#5415948) Homepage
    ...as long as they don't resort to Register.com/Verisign tactics like fake expiration notices and renewing domains without asking me first.

    I do wonder what they have planned for this... with the addition of domain name registration to their list of products I can imagine them introducing some sort of turnkey affiliate web site product.

    One thing you don't want to see when browsing domain names:
    If you like this domain name, you might also be interested in...
    • goatse.cx
    • ...as long as they don't resort to Register.com/Verisign tactics like fake expiration notices and renewing domains without asking me first.

      No, that's not good enough. I have stopped dealing with Amazon about a year ago, and I am proud to say I have not purchased anything from them since. They tend to have the pretty unfriendly and unhelfpful customer service. Returns and order changes require a miracle to happen. (Ignoring the patent issues and such).
      Of course they do tend to have relatively low prices... The "negative margin" busness entry approach explains that...

  • I hope their domain database is more secure than their creditcard database

  • umm ok (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:55PM (#5415955)
    will people stop saying "amazon will patent domain registrations"?

    the joke is dead.

    it died after the first time it was posted. repeating it in a different form 3 ... 4 times after that doesn't help to make it any funnier.
  • Since CDNOW went away and was absorbed by "the collective". They took one of the best sites for music I could find and turned it into a useless pile of dung. I did a search for a song I wanted and ended up getting a page trying to sell me a porceline figurine.

    Fuck Amazon.com
    • Sorry you couldn't figure out Amazon's highly complex search feature:

      1) Go to cdnow.com
      2) Select "Music" in the search box
      3) Type in the über-trendy album or artist you want to impress your friends by owning (e.g., "Mass Romantic")
      4) Hit enter/return
      5) ...
      6) Profit!! (well, for Amazon at least)
      • Gee lemme see here....did that, did that too, did that third thing as well, managed to somehow figured out that I needed to hit enter/return......waited for results.....got porceline figure. Hmmm, Terry Tate made sense, what went wrong?

        Could it be that Amazon had the page for what I was looking for fucked up? Yeah, that also sounds reasonable. I bet that's it. They need Terry Tate, Office Linebacker working for them. I bet he could get that page fixed in no time.

        I could have been more eloquent in my complaint but it hardly calls for sarcasm. I went there looking for something (and no, I don't really give a shit what my friends think of my listening taste, once you get past 30 or so that becomes less important to you) and got a screwed up page. I then went looking around and found the new arrangement much less useful to me than the previous setup.

        First impressions. If you don't think they're important (and you happen to be Amazon,com) then watch and see how many items I purchase from your website in the future.

        And I'm a friggin "Troll" for posting my experience dealing with Amazon? Go figure?
        • I probably could've been nicer about my response, too. Sorry about that. I just wanted to indicate that I haven't had any problems with Amazon's search functions in the past. (I never did much browsing at either CDNow or Amazon, so I can't comment there.) Judging from other posts, your experience is probably more common than mine.

          Re: musical taste -- there are a few people whose taste I respect enough that I'm curious to know what they think of mine. They may suggest other stuff I might like (like the aforementioned New Pornographers CD, which was the last CD I bought from Amazon). They might challenge some of my choices, which might make me re-evaluate them (like Avril Lavigne's CD, which I think is surprisingly solid). However, I wouldn't make changes just to fit in with them. I'm 31, so I've felt this way for about a year now. ^_^

          And yes, I could probably get the page fixed. However, the last (and first) e-commerce site I made had a nasty bug where it assumed your credit card's approval number would actually be a number. (I blame the merchant system's API.)
      • I've tried doing searches where I specify dvds, but end up with search results of movie times.

        I've listed their new releases on sci-fi/fantasy, and discovered that somehow they have regular fiction in there too. (One was the story of a woman as she approached menopause and how she dealt with her emotion over it. Definitely not sf)

        Amazon's search system leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, I would go there more often if they would give me the option to NOT see the recommendations. It's just a pain the the arse, clutters the screen, and wastes my bandwidth.

        I usually go to amazon only if I'm clicking on someone's link. What really irks me is that my investment club bought amazon stock. In other words, I'm a stockowner of them. *grumble*

  • w00t! (Score:5, Funny)

    by one9nine ( 526521 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:58PM (#5415967) Journal
    Free shipping on two or more domains. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay.

  • In other major retailer news.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:59PM (#5415974)
    In other major retailer news, it turns out that Wal-Mart will be expanding the range of products they sell by adding a new "Sam's Choice" soda Pepsi Blue imitation. Analysts are speculating why anyone would want to buy generic Pepsi Blue, let alone the real deal.

  • About time... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:00PM (#5415975)
    I am not suprised at all.

    I use to be a member of the team that ran, maintained and added new domains to Amazon.com DNS's. While I won't tell you everything, I can tell you they did this to save money since Amazon.com owns something like 4,000 domains (Maybe less, maybe more).
    Just paying the money to be a registar and then not having to pay to register new domains and also not paying to re-register all the domain names they own will save them a lot of money.

    Smart move, IMHO.
    • Just paying the money to be a registar and then not having to pay to register new domains and also not paying to re-register all the domain names they own will save them a lot of money.

      At $10 a doman thats almost $40,000 a year. Now they just need some servers and a tech guy to manage it. Yup, should save them tons.
    • That's a lot of domains to be squatting on. I wish there was a way to prevent huge companies from squatting on names that won't be put to good use. Years ago, the registering agreement included a statement that you intended to do just that. If it still does, it's really being abused.

  • Domain Registration is second best net business (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hillct ( 230132 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:01PM (#5415985) Homepage Journal
    Say what you want about Verisign, they had it right, and so it should come as no shock that Amazon.com has entered the domain registration business. Verisign operates in the two markets that are at the gateway to the net. they are the premier SSL certificate authority and the the primary (although far from the best) domain registrar. Amazon - as a well run business - is seeking to mazimize proffits so it follows that they would enter the domain registration business, since it has one of the highest margins of any known internet business with the possible exception of the sale of pornography, and, yes, sales of SSL certificates. If the bariers to entry int othe Certificate Authority weren't so high, I'm sure Amazon.com would have attempted entry into that market as well.

    --CTH
    • well if that's the case, when is Micro$oft going to enter into the market?
    • I could never understand why it's so damn expensive (and similarly profitable). Isn't all you need is a big server and maybe 2 admins, and that's it? I mean, even $10 year that the lowest guys charge for domain registration is a LOT, considering that nobody ever does anything on your behalf (everything is 100% automated), and the whole thing is just for them to keep a record in their database which you enter and maintain yourself. And that's for every year!

      The cost is not high for a website, but domain registrars must be making a huge profit (99% profit?) on these things. Anybody has an idea of the costs involved to the registrar?

      Same for ssl certificates. What's the deal with that? It's just a freaking key (I can make one myself!), and it costs how much for them to sign it (via a 100% automated process)???

      IMHO, it costs them (or should cost them) less than pennies to deal with you.
      • The big sunk cost is that for initial acceptance by ICANN as a registrar. I believe the costs there approach $250,000. Then, there are typical server, bandwidth and administration costs, plus the cost of running a call center and probably some softwar development for establishing the user domain registration and management interface. After that, a portion of the registration fees go to the organization managing the particular RLDs you're registering domains for, and as far as I know, that's about it. I'm not certain of tha accuracy of the above, but this is what I recall reading a few years back. The folks over at ICANN Watch [icannwatch.org] probably have more authoritative information on the subject.

        --CTH

  • amazon.com itself (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ruud ( 7631 )
    interesting that amazon.com itself is still registered at network solutions.

    Domain Name: AMAZON.COM
    Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.

    • interesting that amazon.com itself is still registered at network solutions.

      Have you ever tried to transfer a domain between registrars? Would you bet your business on Verisign not messing it up?
    • Amazon's registration business isn't operational yet... and even if it was they've likely registered Amazon.com for the next 100 years or so with NetSol... why throw away a perfectly good registration, when it's nothing but a geek's trivia question they'd be changing anyway.

  • Choosing a Good Registrar (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:27PM (#5416087)
    This is a bit off-topic, but it deals with domain registration and is something I don't think Slashdot has covered for a long time.

    The number of registrars keeps growing, and the competition is starting to really have a positive effect. A few years back, it was hard to register a domain name for less than thirty dollars a year, without signing some kind of heinous terms of service agreement that legitimately threatened your rights as a domain owner. Now, there are a bunch of places that charge $10 or so a year.

    In a couple months, I've got to re-register my domain names. Does anyone have good info on cheap places to register domains that don't have evil contracting agreements that may endanger my future rights to the domain?

    And, in a related matter, do all registrars nowadays feed unrenewed domain names to domain squatters, who undoubtedly purchase registration rights for a pittance? I noticed when I let a couple less-than-desirable domain names lapse, they went straight to a squatter gambling search engine portal scam page the day my rights ended.

    • Re:Choosing a Good Registrar (Score:5, Informative)

      by man_ls ( 248470 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:34PM (#5416108)
      godaddy.com

      good service, 9.95/domain/year/1 year, and it goes down to like 6.95/year at 5 years.
      • The fact is, it's a miracle of stupidity that Verisign can sell anybody a domain anymore.

        It used to be that the price of a domain was $70 for two years, and you got it from Network Solutions. No choice in the matter, NetSol was the only game in town.

        Then came the era of competition... but since a domain registration is a domain registration which is always a domain registration, there's really not much difference in what the competitors have to sell. The only differences come in terms of price, and what interfaces they offer for changing your domain.

        Verisign's main advantage is that they still have the default renewal rights to those domains that were registered with the old NetSol years ago. No sane person would pick Verisign's registration service if they knew that any of the other full-service registration sites (Register.com, etc.) or the low-cost registration sites (000domains.com, GoDaddy.com, etc.) existed and can renew their domains too. This shows a lot about consumer inertia... letting accepting the auto-renewal at the old price for something whose price has dropped dramatically.
        • except when registrars are in other countries, then your sites may be subject to their local laws, such as what happened with joker.com (and which is why i've moved all of my domains from them.)
      • I like godaddy, and I have my domain there. I do not like the current registration procedures. Before one is actually able to buy a domain, one has to go through a couple of screens turning down the purchase of additional domains and services. I wonder if this actually increases their sales enough to justify the inconvenience to the customer. I mean if I go to low life fast food restaurant I expect to be asked if I want fries with that, but even there they will only ask me once.

    • Here is a good registrar (Score:5, Informative)

      by ciurana ( 2603 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @10:06PM (#5416194) Homepage Journal
      Anonymous Coward wrote: In a couple months, I've got to re-register my domain names. Does anyone have good info on cheap places to register domains that don't have evil contracting agreements that may endanger my future rights to the domain?

      I manage servers and build software for several companies in the pr0n industry; it seems like most of these guys like registering with www.godaddy.com [godaddy.com]. I use them all the time with excellent results. I've registered four of my own domains with them so far; some of my friends followed me there. In total I'm managing about 120 domains with no hassles. Go Daddy's domain transfer rate is ~$7.00 and registration for a new domain is about ~$9.00/year. I have nothing but good things to say about them.

      The only problems we had so far were in transferring domains from Verisign/NetSol over to Go Daddy. NetSol makes it almost impossible to happen; it takes two or three iterations before they comply.

      Cheers and good luck,

      E

  • With their track record... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Great, now they're going to patent "A method of assigning numbers to computers for use in transferring information"

  • In other news, (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by mbstone ( 457308 )
    Amazon was granted exclusive registration rights for the new TLD, .scam

  • who's a good registrar? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:54PM (#5416166) Homepage
    So who is a good registrar these days?

    I currently have one domain registered with Network Solutions, who are, of course eeeeeeevil, and when it comes up for expiration I'll go somewhere else.

    I have another registered with Gandi [gandi.net]. Although Gandi is cheap and doesn't send spam, that's about all I can say for them. I started trying yesterday to get a connection to their server so I could update a DNS entry to point to my new webhost. Tried around the clock at various times (including getting up at 1 a.m. my time), only got through after many many frustrating attempts. (Oh yeah, I e-mailed their support address, and got a reply saying that support was unavailable for an indefinite time.)

    So who's good? I've heard good things about EasyDNS/opensrs/tucows [easydns.com], but they're not particularly cheap. Although I'm not a fan of Amazon's behavior (patents, labor relations,...), I'd be interested to see if they turn out to be a good registrar.

  • Office space (Score:3, Funny)

    by tedhiltonhead ( 654502 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:56PM (#5416171)
    I just read that Amazon bought a small office just outside Las Vegas. The best part? The girls know your name although you were there only once six months ago.
  • Before they get a patent an "original method for automated online internet address commericialization [sic]"

  • It Can't Get Any Worse! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At least Amazon is a Profitable company! Yes, they are on the wrong side of the patent sensibility fence, but they didn't get to be what they are without taking care of customers--something other registars seem to think is optional.

    Also, this could be a good way to finally destroy ICANN! Talk them into joining the Open Domain projects [of course keep them from patenting it out from under us] Amazon, Yahoo, and Google...example only, could each run their own DNS out from under ICANN. The system is designed to do this--It's high-time someone did it. And Bezo isn't the type of guy to put up with ICANN's s#$%!
  • I think you guys forgot to mention that.

  • Squatters (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Brian Kendig ( 1959 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @11:39PM (#5416669)
    These days *anyone* can become a registrar, it seems.

    That's how cybersquatters can afford to snatch up tens of thousands of domain names the moment they expire. The cybersquatters aren't paying $35 to another registrar for each name; they're just putting out a couple of thousand bucks to become registrars themselves then they get to snap up as many newly-expired domain names as they want, for free.

    And then they easily recoup the couple of thousand bucks by finding people who didn't mean to let their domains expire, and extorting large sums of money from those people to give them their domains back.

    Cybersquatters are scum of the earth, second only to spammers.
    • > That's how cybersquatters can afford to snatch up tens of thousands of domain names the moment they expire. The cybersquatters aren't paying $35 to another registrar for each name; they're just putting out a couple of thousand bucks to become registrars themselves then they get to snap up as many newly-expired domain names as they want, for free.

      That's not true. Anyone can become a registrar but what it gives them is massive bulk-discounts - they don't get to register domains for no cost.

      Last I checked, it's more than a couple of thousand dollars - think tens of thousands - which is why the OpenSRS reseller scheme is so appealing (you can get started for as little as $250).

    • Re:Squatters (Score:3, Insightful)

      by iso ( 87585 )
      These days *anyone* can become a registrar, it seems.

      Yes. That's what "deregulation" means.

      they're just putting out a couple of thousand bucks to become registrars themselves then they get to snap up as many newly-expired domain names as they want, for free.

      Actually, no. An ICANN accredited registrar pays the ICANN fees as you mentioned, but does not get names for free. Each domain name comes at a cost of approximately $6US (for COM/NET/ORG). I know this because I work at an ICANN accredited registrar. It's cheap for the cybersquatters, but not free.

      - j
  • I wonder if there's any chance they'll sell "preowned" domain names for a significantly reduced price. I've gotten a lot of good DreamCast games that way!
    • godaddy sells "used domain names" here [godaddy.com]. I thought it was a joke. Lots of interesting choices, and they seem to include the balance of the previous term (like transferring the manufacturer's warranty on a used car).
  • What's up with /. lately? Every Dick, Moe, and Larry is trying to reply with stupid humor. 99% of the replies in this topic have ZERO substance and filled with lame "patent" "one-click" "goatse.cx" comments.

    *Yes I know my post is stupid too*
  • This is good, it means less seedy companies setting up domains with cheesy, mid-nineties-looking pseudo portal websites. Damn I hate those things. I wonder what will be placed on the available domains.

  • it's obvious (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Syre ( 234917 ) on Sunday March 02, 2003 @06:54AM (#5417911)
    Here is my prediction:

    Amazon has seen how successful Yahoo has been with the Yahoo Store concept -- offering shopping cart hosting for some monthly fee, then taking a percentage (3.5% in Yahoo's case) of gross sales for all sales which come through searches of Yahoo shopping.

    This latter tithe is optional, but is the chief attraction of Yahoo Store -- your products automatically and instantly show up in a popular searchable directory (Yahoo Shopping, not Yahoo Directory). Other advantages:

    - customers can use "yahoo wallet" to purchase items
    - stores can participate in a ratings service which allows them to earn stars based on customer feedback surveys

    This is a powerful model (though the feedback mechanism isn't as powerful as Ebay's), and one which makes Yahoo lots o' cash.

    I think Amazon wants to do something similar and being able to register domains is just the tip of this iceberg.
  • Don't support patents on obvious ideas, don't support patents on software, don't support patents on implementing other people's ideas, don't support laws about what you can think, don't support Amazon.com.

    TWW

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