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0 pointsderefr7y ago0 comments

Maybe names that have obvious “generic” squatter value—i.e. names that (at the time of their attempted purchase) describe entire verticals, rather than uniquely identifying a business—should be put up for auction rather than being first-come-first-served.

(That would also include names that describe a vertical that someone tried to trademark into being the name of a business anyway: pets.com and the like. If that trademark isn’t already well known, then this is just an attempt to end-run the auction system, rather than a valid claim.)

Given that TLDs can decide their own allocation policies, I’m surprised none of them have tried this yet.

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7 comments · 4 top-level

joshuamorton7y ago· 2 in thread

They are, the domains are reverse-dutch auctioned. Buying a .dev domain today is like ~$10000, it'll be $12 in 2 weeks.

Edit: Normal dutch, not reverse.

_v7gu7y ago

> reverse-dutch auction

Why? Even if it's "cute", it serves no other purpose than racking up prices and keeping buyers second-guessing themselves. Just run a normal Dutch or a second-price auction.

CydeWeys7y ago

This is a normal Dutch auction.

If your question is why not run a standard auction, the answer is that operational overhead to do that is much higher than simply having a given price for creations on a given day, and there'd thus be fewer registrars participating. You need a whole eBay-like experience to run a standard auction; it's a non-trivial amount of work just to support one launch.

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Klathmon7y ago· 1 in thread

Well the .dev domains are going up in a "dutch auction" style.

The price starts off at an insane $11,500 per domain, and then slowly over the course of 2 weeks goes down to $12 per domain, first come first serve.

It's a pretty good solution in my opinion to the problem of how to "fairly" distribute domain names.

I want to pick up a few, but I'm going to wait until they are down to the lowest tier as i'm pretty sure nobody is going to pay even $100 for them. And if they do, well then they probably want it more than I do!

everdev7y ago

> The price starts off at an insane $11,500 per domain

It's only insane if no one wants to pay that much. I bet tons of companies are willing to pay that for premium .dev domains.

savanaly7y ago

>should be put up for auction rather than being first-come-first-served.

Have you by chance heard of the Coase Theorem in economics? Which states that given that property rights are well defined and transaction costs relatively low, initial distribution of the property rights will not affect the efficiency of the final outcome reached. In other words, if a given company is given the rights to something and some other company would value that thing more, we do not have a problem, they will negotiate to the efficient outcome on their own by trade.

mimsee7y ago

Apple.com?

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