A pox on all domain squatters

I’m starting to wonder if there shouldn’t be some kind of use-it-or-lose it rule on domain names.

Before I consolidated my blogs onto the Sparkplug 9 domain, and moved off my old gilgamesh.ca domain, I looked hard at the alternatives.

Something that had some kind of connection to my name would have been nice. So I started going through all the combinations:

And so on … until I had racked up a list of probably 10 or more domain names that would have made sense given my name – most of which were not actually being used for any particular website at all. Just parked, with ads on them, pop-unders for the unwary, and offers for online gambling, etc.

Not cool.

Apparently there’s gold in squatting on domain names. I just wonder if allowing that business is worth the inconvenience any company or individual has to go through these days to get a website.

Because so many domain names are taken by squatters, legit sites looking for a home on the web end up with names like Ookles and 37blah, 92whatevers, and 4somethings. Or orange monkey (OK, I made that one up).

Of course, from such hassles we also get wonderful constructions like del.icio.us, and histori.ca.

   

2 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Hey there,

    I’m sorry you feel we’re squatting. I’m the founder of Ookles and we’re really not squatting imho. We’ve got a web service under development and we’ve missed our internal ship deadlines several times and we are racing to get it done.

    My apologies for frustrating you.

    Take care
    Scott

  • Not at all, Scott – sorry for the misperception!

    I’m aware that you’re not squatting. My point is that the name of your service is umm … how can I say this nicely … a little out of left field.

    Why? I’m guessing it’s mostly because so many domain names are taken by squatters.

    I’ll update the article to be more clear.