If this is what GoDaddy is doing, let's get back at them.
Everyone can search for a variety of domains that we are not actually interested in, and waste their money if they frontrun us.
Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
461–470 of 751 posts
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be worth avoiding at that initial stage, but would be less and less of a factor as the company grows and matures. I work for a startup with ~60 employees. The DNS was setup through GoDaddy by our CEO over 6 years ago when the company consisted of just founders. Employee #1 updated GoDaddy to point to AWS for nameservers. We've been managing DNS through Route53 ever since. It's tech debt, sure, but migrating…
Wow. That's funny because that's the exact evolution that happened at my current company (GoDaddy points to AWS and AWS does the rest) and we're now a unicorn. Being a unicorn is not a reflection of engineering quality though. That said, the earlier engineers were pretty bad (So bad that someone at one point terminated every line in Python with a semicolon. Those engineers are nearly all gone now) and I like to think…
Being a unicorn isn't a reflection of leadership quality either. Again, a particular litmus test that has a quality threshold may work for some and not others, it's still valid for consideration.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#463Ted from Namecheap here. I cannot speak to GoDaddy's practices. However, I can say that for Namecheap, this is not something we would ever even consider doing. In my experience though, lookups are more complex than most think. We are querying so many different sources to give you availability status, some of which are less reliable than others. For example, with smaller TLDs like .ai or .is, lookups may be less relia…
Hi Ted - can you speak to Namecheap's stance on bulk spam domain registrations and the fact that Namecheap does nothing to stop it? There has been (at least in the Bay Area) a large increase in text spam. They all have a very similar format, e.g. pretending you missed a delivery, and try to get you to click on a link, usually a .info domain. They are all hosted on Alibaba Cloud, but they are registered in bulk via Na…
> How do you feel about registering hate speech in a domain name, or someone else's trademark?
In the US, all kinds of speech is "awful but lawful", including hate speech. I don't think registrars should be policing legal speech.
If there's trademark infringement going on, there are legal processes to which the injured parties can avail themselves.
If there's more serious criminality afoot, law enforcement should generally lead.
I don't like the idea of unpopular but legal speech being scrubbed from the public internet because people object loudly to it. I think domain registrars (and other infrastructure vendors) are qualitatively different than social media properties, etc, in this regard.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've actually always used Godaddy for searching and Namecheap for registering, simply because Godaddy's search interface is faster and more stable but Namecheap is great for not hassling you and way easier to configure. Fix the search Namecheap, and I will no longer use Godaddy again!
Try http://instantdomainsearch.com/ (No affiliation, just a happy user)
I'm more a fan of https://tld-list.com
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If they are on GoDaddy, it means that they are technically incompetent. Let's just say it can be used as an indicator.
One exception is domains picked up from a GoDaddy auction. I believe you have to pay for a year, which you might not want to waste. Or even a transfer takes a while to complete.
You don't lose or "waste" the registrations/renewals you've already paid for when you transfer a domain to a new registrar.
Most registrars will include a year as part of the transfer so if you have a domain at GoDaddy that expires in 2024, you can transfer it to Namecheap and then it'll expire in 2025 -- without "wasting" what you've already paid for.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use a combo of porkbun, Namecheap, Google domains (primarily all the .dev stuff from that landrush), hover (some legacy stuff) and Isnic (the Icelandic registrar for .is domains). I like Porkbun quite a bit but sometimes Namecheap is cheaper or it’s easier to just add to that account. I think I can proudly say I’ve never used GoDaddy as a registrar, but I’ve been with some bad ones over the last 20 years so I can’t…
I found it interesting that Ted mentions Namecheap searching .is. I have a .is domain through Isnic (actually just renewed yesterday), and I'm using 1984 for DNS because Isnic requires a domestic NS provider. But Ted's comment implies you can register .is through Namecheap. I wonder how/if they get around the Icelandic NS host problem.
I've had an .is domain for a few years now and wasn't aware of that requirement.
DNS service for my .is domain is handled by AWS Route 53.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
If ".name" works the typical TLD way, you don't own anything. You merely have a business relationship with the owner of "ellis.name". That owner could transfer "ellis.name", but you don't own anything transferable. Of course, ".name" might not work in the expected way, but it seems a likely explanation for the issue you report.
The owner of yyy.name is the .name registry. That's just how they work. The intention was that people register first.last.name, and that multiple people could register under the same last.name.
Then it sounds like the .name registry is also in the business of selling subdomains, i.e. they're the owner of yyy.name. In other words, it's not possible for Namecheap to rent you xxx.yyy.name, because to do that they'd have to be the owner of yyy.name, and they're not.
Sounds like the tech support agent and supervisor got it basically right.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. You sound like someone that could really be of benefit to my latest startup. We're doing bigly things. If you're interested in finding out more drop me a line... gator3827@aol.com
there's kinda that ironically-lame hipster vibe to using aol.com email addresses. they're coming back in style.
Just imagine having the OG handle[1] joe@aol.com. That person either has some credibility as being around for quite a while, or paid quite a bit for it.
1: I didn't make up the terminology, I'm just using it because it exists...
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#469.io almost always shows AVL on GD and then when added to cart its often registered because the search for that one doesn't seem to connect properly to the actual registration process for .io
A 6 letter word that can be well branded and is immediately memorable? I would be more shocked if it were actually avl
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
One exception is domains picked up from a GoDaddy auction. I believe you have to pay for a year, which you might not want to waste. Or even a transfer takes a while to complete.
You don't lose or "waste" the registrations/renewals you've already paid for when you transfer a domain to a new registrar. Most registrars will include a year as part of the transfer so if you have a domain at GoDaddy that expires in 2024, you can transfer it to Namecheap and then it'll expire in 2025 -- without "wasting" what you've already paid for.
You're right. I think my memory was domains where you wanted to prepay for "privacy", so the ownership didnt show during the xfer after the auction.