news The world is running out of domain names — what will we do when they’re all gone?

[deez007]

Article I found published on Quartz (QZ.com)

The world is nearly out of good “.com” domain names—and even the fourth circuit of the United States Court of Appeals agrees.

As global internet usage rises, .com naming is going to get more and more complicated. Our languages only contain a finite number of meaningful words, so brand naming is becoming much more than coming up with a unique, snazzy moniker—it also involves knowledge of intellectual property rights, law, and a large of dash of luck.

Many well-known brands have encountered challenges securing their preferred domain names. For example, Google renamed their parent company “Alphabet,” but it doesn’t own alphabet.com—BMW does. In 2014, Microsoft spent $2.5 billion to acquire Mojang, the Swedish company behind the popular Minecraft video game, but it didn’t get the domain name minecraft.com with it—that belongs to an Australia mining-engineering company, MineCraft Consulting PTY Ltd. (Oh yeah—that Minecraft.) Meanwhile, Nissan has spent over 20 years trying to acquire nissan.com from a man named Uzi Nissan, and it took Apple 16 years to acquire apple.co.uk from a British company called Apple Illustrations.

Read Full Story here:
https://qz.com/994698/domain-name-r...-become-a-lot-worse-when-we-run-out-of-names/

 

[hookbox]

During the 70's the world was running out of oil. Now, we have a glut.

Just go on Pinterest and look at the domain names bloggers use....2,3 and even 4 word combinations.

Weloveparsley.com ain't too pretty, but it works just fine.

One word .com unavailable? So what? Phrases work just as well.

We have a glut of oil because in the 70s cars were getting 5 miles to the gallon but now they are getting 7 times that.

 

[johname]

The glut has to do with them inventing fracking, which is pumping water into rock formations and squeezing out the previously impossible to get oil. Once they cherry picked the easier to get fracking sites, we will go back to the Saudis ruling oil and high prices again.

Names can't be all gone, just SEX in every extension lol

 

[Dave]

I'll offer another perspective

Let's see now.. 63 maximum possible characters (to get really technical, yes I do mean label).

If we use only alphanumeric ASCII characters, so a-z and 0-9 we have 36 possible alphanumerical characters.

(36 possible choices) ^ (63 characters) = 1.1144422e+98 (exponent, you need to move the decimal place 98 times to the right to get the actual number...)

That is just for 63 characters long.

Now work out how much for all lengths of characters combined together (1-63) and you will realise that not even 0.0000000000000000000000000001% of all possible .com domains have been registered yet.

 

[deez007]

I'll offer another perspective

Let's see now.. 63 maximum possible characters (to get really technical, yes I do mean label).

If we use only alphanumeric ASCII characters, so a-z and 0-9 we have 36 possible alphanumerical characters.

(36 possible choices) ^ (63 characters) = 1.1144422e+98 (exponent, you need to move the decimal place 98 times to the right to get the actual number...)

That is just for 63 characters long.

Now work out how much for all lengths of characters combined together (1-63) and you will realise that not even 0.0000000000000000000000000001% of all possible .com domains have been registered yet.

Perhaps, but the author says "The world is nearly out of good “.com” domain names"

Now, how many of the the 1.1144422e+98 (exponent) possible combinations of domains fall into the "good .com domain names" category

 

[johname]

The World be out of good dot coms for a long time lol

 

[Dave]

Perhaps, but the author says "The world is nearly out of good “.com” domain names"

Now, how many of the the 1.1144422e+98 (exponent) possible combinations of domains fall into the "good .com domain names" category

Yes, I was cheeky and basing my post on the title of this thread.

 

[deez007]

Yes, I was cheeky and basing my post on the title of this thread.

Lol - Thats what I figured

Having said that.... in my defence - I copied the article, including the title verbatim from the orignal article...

 

[Kuffy]

They haven't all gone - they are just hiding.

 

[jideofor]

During the 70's the world was running out of oil. Now, we have a glut.

Just go on Pinterest and look at the domain names bloggers use....2,3 and even 4 word combinations.

Weloveparsley.com ain't too pretty, but it works just fine.

One word .com unavailable? So what? Phrases work just as well.

I remember selling GainYourEdge in the king to someone. lol

 

[Jimmy Bearden]

I have always been a firm believer in the .com names. They will continue to gain value and be the winners.

 

[wot]

The World be out of good dot coms for a long time lol

Most of the good .com names are owned by domainers,investors,speculators and Chinese money launderers.
No idea of the % of "good" .com that are in the hands of end users compared to those above but I am guessing the latter by a long way.

 

[Smiles76]

Most of the good .com names are being hoarded by domainers looking for unrealistic prices that most likely will never come. It's silly to be holding on to domains for 10+ years insisting on a price that the market simply won't bear. If most domainers got out of their lottery mentality and started sellling domains for reasonable prices, there would be more liquidity in the market and more domain sales to end-users thus no shortage of good domains.

 

[deez007]

Most of the good .com names are being hoarded by domainers looking for unrealistic prices that most likely will never come. It's silly to be holding on to domains for 10+ years insisting on a price that the market simply won't bear. If most domainers got out of their lottery mentality and started sellling domains for reasonable prices, there would be more liquidity in the market and more domain sales to end-users thus no shortage of good domains.

I think part of the problem is when people see some really aweful domains getting sold for top dollar. It creates a false impression that their domains might be worth a small fortune. This perception is also driven by market hype created by certain well known domainers who constantly publish the crazy sales prices they fetch for shockingly poor domain names. I for one strongly believe that some of these guys are actually funded or incentivized by some of the registries... when they create market hype it encourages more people to get in on the domaining action and also encourages more domainers to hang on to even their weaker domains for longer periods than they would have. This obviously means more money for registries....

 

[garptrader]

When the occupancy rate of apartments or hotels is consistently high you may see more hotels or apartments being built. Before new tlds were released industry turnover was only about one percent. So why did we need another 25 million aftermarket domains. Who is going to buy them all? How many years of inventory do domain investors hold?

 

[Tia Wood]

Darn you domainers for taking all the dot coms!

 

[HotKey]

According to Schilling, over a billion 6-9 character numerics available, and that's just in .xyz. Multiply that by the thousand or more other extensions, I think we should be good for at least a few more years before we run out.

One thing to consider- every domain, whether it's bonkywonky.konky or 001223676.com, they are all designed to do the exact same thing. Down to their basic core, is one name really better than the other? It's our need for constant "show" that gets in the way, thereby creating artificial scarcity.

 

[SBS66]

This type of general headline reminds me of all the hype on new extensions.

 

[imadoer]

You can still buy good .com You might not be able to register them like you used to. But you can still buy them. People will continue to buy .com And thats that.

 

[siya]

Better register a domain which you like before it's too late... But the world will not run out of domain names because we can get .net

 

[RomanAvery]

What do we do? Create new tlds.