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How many .com domain names are unused?

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Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#71

Post by 3xblah »

computator wrote: post #34

Can a domain name registrar register a domain name for themselves for free or for a minimal fee? What about Verisign -- if they registered ".com" domain names for themselves , who would they even pay since there is no one above them? Seriously, does anyone know the answer to this? I've never found an authoritative answer. I've wondered if domain name registrars are speculating in the domain name market themselves. Pe…

Many years ago, in the heyday of domain speculation (after the dot-com crash), some of the largest domain speculators became registrars to gain advantages such as the one you mention.

This conflict of interest was not limited to registrars. Registries got into the game as well, reserving names for the sole purpose of exploiting speculators or speculating themselves.

What the OP could have done instead of taking a random sample is to examine certain nameservers in the com zone. That is, look at certain registrars. This reveals the true extent of parking.

Not sure about the situation today, but in the past many domain registrants were unaware that their registrar was deriving revenue from their "unused" domains The registrants were paying the fees to keep the registrations active and the regsistrar was collecting the ad revenue by setting up parking on the domains.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#72

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Meekro wrote: post #68
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trustworthy and their domain management tools, particularly for dealing with large numbers of domains, is on point. I've transferred to other registrars before, and am moving some of my less critical domains to Cloudflare for the cost savings currently[1]. But my main domains will remain with GoDaddy for the foreseeable future. Oh, and they have 24/7 phone support, that at least, last time I had to call, was US-…

Just curious, how many domains do you have and what kinds of bulk management tools do you need? I've been very happy with Cloudflare's registrar myself, even though they aren't always the cheapest[1]. Cloudflare just silently auto-renews all of my domains so I never have to think about when they're going to expire. And I don't mind the lack of nameservers since I can't think of a reason to use non-cloudflare nameserv…

About 20-30 at any given time. I expect to be able to see the list of domains I own, when they expire, and if auto-renew is on or off from one convenient panel.

Also "just silently auto-renews" is not an okay behavior for me either. Even when I have auto-renew on, GoDaddy sends me email notices around renewal time for any of my domains. I like to manually renew them a bit early to ensure there's no problems with payment processing. Obviously I have like a year until any of my Cloudflare-held domains renew, but if I don't get email notices in advance, I will likely look at transferring them away. Proper notice of account/billing activity is a must for trustworthy service.

For one, my host auto-configures a lot of features on the DNS for my domains. Cloudflare imports it, obviously, when I transfer over, but if my host changes something, Cloudflare isn't going to get it, and I don't even have the option to change my name server provider even temporarily for troubleshooting purposes. That's a big flaw, and Cloudflare will need to fix it to keep me.

I don't have any .io domains, but my understanding is Cloudflare keeps literally nothing for any of their domains, so presumably Namecheap was able to cut a better deal with the registry.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#73

Post by blihp »

markovbot wrote: post #60

I'm surprised that such a large percentage of domains are registered with GoDaddy. What leads people to pick them? They're such a shitty registrar, every time I have to deal with them it's awful.

Back in the day, they were much less expensive than most of the other registrars. Now it's mainly inertia in the same way people still have AOL or Yahoo accounts.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#74

Post by Gustomaximus »

zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

I've always wondered if they could somehow price domains logorithmically.

First domain is cheap and then cost goes up x% per additional domain. Stop people holding swaths of domains at each gTLD level.

Would people end up just having a bunch of shelf corps...

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#75

Post by walrus01 »

zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

One need only look at the $185,000 "application fees" paid to icann by companies like donuts, and play follow the money, for all these new insipid GTLDs.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#76

Post by AmericanChopper »

zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

I agree that ICANN is either corrupt or useless, but you still have the problem of scarcity to address. Domain names are important assets for businesses, and ‘good’ ones are going to be in high demand. Squatters add essentially no value to the system, but there’s no fair way to determine who gets a domain name that multiple parties want, aside from letting the market take care of it. This is a flaw in the system itself, but I can’t see many realistic ways of addressing it.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#77

Post by xfitm3 »

bigiain wrote: post #54
rootusrootus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't godaddy or someone like them doing exactly that, a number of years ago? I seem to recall a situation where you'd go to their site and search for a domain, and if you didn't buy it, then the next day it would mysteriously show as no longer available, but purchasable.

It's called domain name front running. GoDaddy have repeatedly been accused of it, as have many other registrars... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

I think this specific process is referred to as domain tasting. Front running is using insider information, such as whois logs, while tasting is actively registering domains and measuring how much traffic the domain gets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#78

Post by BurningFrog »

rafiki6 wrote: post #56
zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

Couldn't agree more. Not sure why the task of operating DNS' isn't the domain of governments the world over. It's kind of like operating a post office. Post office's are the ones who have the routing information and capability to route physical messages and packages. They are still operated on a for profit model, but they are also generally very well regulated. Same thing should apply with registrars

When you scan for uncorrupt institutions, how the hell do you end up on "governments the world over"?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#79

Post by lukeify »

BurningFrog wrote: post #78
rafiki6 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. Not sure why the task of operating DNS' isn't the domain of governments the world over. It's kind of like operating a post office. Post office's are the ones who have the routing information and capability to route physical messages and packages. They are still operated on a for profit model, but they are also generally very well regulated. Same thing should apply with registrars

When you scan for uncorrupt institutions, how the hell do you end up on "governments the world over"?

Because some of us don't believe governments are inherently evil?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#80

Post by YjSe2GMQ »

I was hoping to see there a block with unregistered domain names.

One could do it by, for example, training a Markov chain/neural network to spew out (sample) domains, and then see how many are currently registered, to compute the general XXXX.com space utilization fraction.

This approach would be powered by a more sensible, IMHO, probability distribution than, say, taking all domain names with up to 30 {a-z0-9} characters with uniform probabilities.

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