Look I’ll make myself clear.
I know quite a bit about it, since I had to deal with it. Maybe it’s not technically squatting but it’s certainly taking advantage in my book. People will register websites for ideas which they know would be good, but don’t have any plan or capability to actually implement. Nor the desire. It’s just blatantly taking money from people who have the ideas because they thought to secure the domain name first.
When you come here and complain, woe is me, about how you only made $250,000 off your domain name sales, I really can’t muster up the sympathy. I’ve encountered this personally several times. I had an idea for a particular website, but all of the descriptive names were taken. People had thought of the idea, but had never gone as far as I had to actually implement it.
What about people who register domains such as yahhoo.com? Is that cybersquatting, technically not, but it is harmful in a lot of ways. I saw that Yahoo! actually owns yahooo.com. Good for them, but they had to pay someone for absolutely no work whatsoever.
But to answer your question, nobody wants websites like RepublicanNews.com or DemocratNews.com because they are too long. If you actually think about it, which websites that are immensely popular actually use a term that wasn’t coined for the sake of getting a great domain name? Yahoo, Google, Ebay…all made up names. Moreover, names like porn.com et al. Are generally crappy websites in my experience. Porn.com seems to be held by a “parking” company. Why is it so valuable? It is a great name, but it takes a great site to back it up.
Also have a look at Kevin Rose and digg.com. The fact that dig.com was taken (he said the owner wanted a large fee) only helped him in the end when he used digg.com which seems even more distinctive. But did the guy who bought dig.com have any idea what the hell the website could be used for? Not at all, but Kevin Rose had a specific set of words that were available to use that fit his idea.
If I were in that game, I would have registered as many three-letter domain names as possible back then. And you have to ask yourself, who would go to SweepsWeek.com? Who is interested in sweeps week outside of network executives? Good domain names are less relevent nowadays because Google has made finding the top site. I could name a site habergockey.com and it’d still work for almost any purpose given it was the right rank in google. Who opens their browser, decides they want to look for a topic, and just types it in as a URL? This was probably the case about five years ago. Fortunately, creative and unique brand names are the norm, and they can’t be predicted in advance.
Imagine it. habergockey.com: Making sense of financial mumbo jumbo.
That’s the problem. There’s only three particular scenarios available to a person wanting to create a website now.
Regardless of the idea:
- Get an idea, choose the most descriptive name possible and pay someone for the name.
- Get an idea, choose the most descriptive name that is available for free and come up with a less than ideal name.
- Get an idea, choose a brand name. Then try to find one that isn’t taken.
Finally, how is buckhead.com not cybersquatting? It was bought by the town of Buckhead. Nice to know that the taxpayers of Buckhead had to shell out a quarter of a million on a domain name.
It’s impossible to rectify the situation, because putting any kind of restraints on domain name registration would do too much harm, and it’s unfortunately something we have to live with. Nice to know you’ve made profits from it.