discuss Unfair business practice in drop catching

[aliweb]

As we know DropCatch and SnapNames are industry leaders when it comes to drop catching a domain. My question is how do we know that they are not doing some unfair business practice to achieve this result? I mean do they have some special arrangements with registry or something that gives them an advantage or it is purely based on their skill?
Do we have some kind of transparency report available on it?

 

[twiki]

do they have some special arrangements with registry or something that gives them an advantage or it is purely based on their skill?

They don't need any such arrangements.

DropCatch owns like 50% of all registrars (don't recall exact numbers but in this zone). SnapNames also owns many and with NameJet added (these two are both owned by web.com), 75% of the internet is firing at once to capture so everyone else is just left watching.

Their model is simple: They bought everyone else as much as they could so now they have thousands of registry connections firing at once. Everyone else has like one or a few max. DC owns more than 1500 registrars (edit= approximate). It's almost impossible to compete with these guys.

It's sheer market domination - and you can't do anything about it while the rules stay like that.

If we get to speculation, I'd rather worry about something else. Why do they require you to place backorders (starting at $10 for discount club) 15 minutes in advance of the drop window? This doesn't make sense. 15 minutes is enough for someone to overbid you if they have access to the data.

I have no direct proof of this, again it is just speculation, but I can tell you that frontrunning is still rampant in the domaining world, with many registrars still doing this shady stuff today. So this made me wonder and it is one reason why I don't use DropCatch with backorders, other than, perhaps, bidding in an existing auction.

Edit: this is an old article from 2016 about DC buying even more registrars back then: http://domainincite.com/21309-dropcatch-spends-millions-to-buy-five-hundred-more-registrars

 

[twiki]

On the other hand, even mentioning the transparency thing in this post, makes me smile. ( generally speaking)

Seriously, you'd expect transparency, fairness and equal chances in this world....?

The game is rigged. Always been rigged, and chances are it will continue to be rigged. Whoever thinks something else, is naive.

Which game?

All of them.

 

[aliweb]

They don't need any such arrangements.

DropCatch owns like 50% of all registrars (don't recall exact numbers but in this zone). SnapNames also owns many and with NameJet added (these two are both owned by web.com), 75% of the internet is firing at once to capture so everyone else is just left watching.

Their model is simple: They bought everyone else as much as they could so now they have thousands of registry connections firing at once. Everyone else has like one or a few max. DC owns more than 1500 registrars (edit= approximate). It's almost impossible to compete with these guys.

It's sheer market domination - and you can't do anything about it while the rules stay like that.

If we get to speculation, I'd rather worry about something else. Why do they require you to place backorders (starting at $10 for discount club) 15 minutes in advance of the drop window? This doesn't make sense. 15 minutes is enough for someone to overbid you if they have access to the data.

I have no direct proof of this, again it is just speculation, but I can tell you that frontrunning is still rampant in the domaining world, with many registrars still doing this shady stuff today. So this made me wonder and it is one reason why I don't use DropCatch with backorders, other than, perhaps, bidding in an existing auction.

Edit: this is an old article from 2016 about DC buying even more registrars back then: http://domainincite.com/21309-dropcatch-spends-millions-to-buy-five-hundred-more-registrars

Wow this is news for me and that explains why they are able to snatch so many names. Didn't know they are so big. But shouldn't this create some kind of issue with the authorities as this looks like monopoly and conflict of interest!?

Sorry didn't understand your point about 15 mins in advance of drop window. You mean if pending delete status starts at for e.g. 9:00am then they can start backorders at 8:45am?

 

[Samer]

it’s a farce.

Dropcatch doesnt even own registrars for their conventional use, rather a “non-retail” registrar army dedicated to pick up drop.

Snapnames is #2 and rest are far away.

It bothers me too, OP.

 

[aliweb]

On the other hand, even mentioning the transparency thing in this post, makes me smile. ( generally speaking)

Seriously, you'd expect transparency, fairness and equal chances in this world....?

The game is rigged. Always been rigged, and chances are it will continue to be rigged. Whoever thinks something else, is naive.

Which game?

All of them.

Yeah the bigger you are, the more easy for you to rig the game. GoDaddy comes to mind when you think about rigging.

 

[aliweb]

it’s a farce.

Dropcatch doesnt even own registrars for their conventional use, rather a “non-retail” registrar army dedicated to pick up drop.

Snapnames is #2 and rest are far away.

It bothers me too, OP.

You mean buying registrars just for the sake of catching domains and end users cannot actually buy domains from those registrars?

 

[redemo]

Yeah the bigger you are, the more easy for you to rig the game. GoDaddy comes to mind when you think about rigging.

I got my first LLLL auction voided last week at Godaddy and lost $ 7 transaction fees. So is it better as a newbie to backorder and bid expired for names that way? Just thinking it can't be voided if nobody owns it. Edit: Or is there another option?

 

[twiki]

Wow this is news for me and that explains why they are able to snatch so many names. Didn't know they are so big. But shouldn't this create some kind of issue with the authorities as this looks like monopoly and conflict of interest!?

Sorry didn't understand your point about 15 mins in advance of drop window. You mean if pending delete status starts at for e.g. 9:00am then they can start backorders at 8:45am?

No it means you can't place a backorder later than 15 minutes before the drop window starts. To me at their tech it would make sense to be able to place a backorder even up to 1 minute before the drop window starts.

Edit: Example, at 8.45 in your timing you can still place a backorder for the 9AM drop but not at 8.46 because it's too late as per rules.

 

[Robin A.]

On the other hand, even mentioning the transparency thing in this post, makes me smile. ( generally speaking)

Seriously, you'd expect transparency, fairness and equal chances in this world....?

The game is rigged. Always been rigged, and chances are it will continue to be rigged. Whoever thinks something else, is naive.

Which game?

All of them.

True! Nearly all markets are rigged. JP Morgan and a few other banks have been suppressing the price for gold and silver for who knows how long, all the while buying the physical metals for cheap. They got a $900 million fine, which was merely a slap on the wrist for them and they just continue to rig these markets.

Complete honesty, transparency and no manipulation - maybe on some other planet

 

[DomainGaze.com]

You mean buying registrars just for the sake of catching domains and end users cannot actually buy domains from those registrars?

Exactly! And the rules allow for that to happen. There are rates (different for various TLDs afaik) at which a dropping domain can be queried for registration by a given registrar and so, you can only have so many queries with 'x' registrars. The only thing you can do is have more and more registrars. It is a game of brute-force, facilitated by the rules.

 

[robs01]

Why do they require you to place backorders (starting at $10 for discount club) 15 minutes in advance of the drop window? This doesn't make sense. 15 minutes is enough for someone to overbid you if they have access to the data.

I'm guessing the 15 minutes is required to allow transmission of the backorder information to all their registrars. (I think I recall one or two registrars requiring an hour or more.) If not for this, you'd probably have just one of their registrars hitting the registry with requests upon expiry instead of the (alleged) thousand+ they have. IMO nothing sinister about that (but that's not to say that something else might be going on too!)

 

[karmaco]

Who cares as long as they get names for you that you want? Anyone not using DropCatch is eliminating a huge portion of domains from within their reach. You will only catch elsewhere if nobody asked for it at DC or Snap.