Domania Rules the World Wide Web
by Bill Gates
A broker of Internet Domain names lists billgates. com for Sale for 1$ million. I am told the name, an Internet address has been advertised for months but remains unsold.
Perhaps I should be flattered that somebody imagines the name is worth so much, especially since my parents gave the same name 42 years ago to me.
Many domain names carrying outrageous price tags have been on the market for a long time and like billgates.com, may never sell. Why would somebody pay $135,000 for Internet address childsplay.com, $300,000 for treesco.com, or $1,5 million for digitalimagery.com?
On the other hand, a market has developed for domain names that sell for a few hundred or even thousands of dollars. A fellow I know recently paid a broker $225 for the name farside.com, which he then gave to a friend, the cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of the Far Side cartoons.
Asking prices for domain names are often between $500 and $2,000, and its not uncommon for really good names to fetch $ 5,000 or more. A media company paid $7,000 for search.com and $15,000 for tv.com. Every once in a while, a name sells for much more; business.com reportedly sold for $150,000.
But the vast majority of the domain names that have been issued in the US so far have cost the owners $100 each the amount Network Solutions (rs.internic.net) charges to register an unused name.
To get a name for $100 you have to be the first person or company to register it, and you may have to defend against infringement claims if the name is similar to someone elses trademark. Courts have shown an understanding willingness to take domain names away from people who have registered somebody elses trademark.
Until you know the rules of Internet names, its easily to be confused by them. A domain name consists of a word or other collection of letters and numbers, followed by a period and an identifier known as a top-level domain name, most often .com. Additional words or letters tacked in front of a domain name may be part of a Web address, but they arent part of the actual domain name. Word or characters that follow a slash after the top-level domain name arent part of the domain name either.
For example, my companys domain name is Microsoft.com. It is part of the e-mail address at which I receive questions: [email protected]. You can reach my companys Web site by typing into a browser either Microsoft.com or www.microsoft.com - but www. Is not part of the domain name. My personal Web page is microsoft.com / billgates, but billgates is not part of the domain name.
The most popular domain names use the top-level domain of.com. The letters are an abbreviation for commercial. Other top-level domains include .net for network,.org for organization and .edu for education. In addition, there are geographic domains. For example, .it for Italy, .us for the United States although the.us domain is seldom used. Each country has its own way of handling registrations.
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The non-geographic domains such as.com are administrated under the supervision of the United States government simply because much of the Internets initial funding came through the National Science Foundation. The U.S. government is proposing to hand supervision over to a U.S. based non- profit organization a prudent and very positive step. In the long run it will be important to internationalize governance because the Internet is worldwide medium.
The growth in domain-name registrations is staggering. Now more than 125,000 new names are registered each month in the U.S. Perhaps as many as 1 million additional names have been registered outside the U.S.
Should you buy a domain name?
If you have an actual use for a name that is available inexpensively, then yes.
On the other hand, if youre buying a name as a speculative investment, youre on tricky ground. If you buy somebody elses trademark, dont count on getting anything for it. Keep in mind that there are often dozens of names that potentially work for a particular Web site, a reality that limits the value of any specific name.
Also keep in mind that in the long run, most if not all addresses will be devalued as browsers and other soft ware get smarter about delivering people to the Web sites they want. Web users in France may be delivered to.fr domains by default, for example.
When the day comes, it wont matter so much if there are dozens of companies with the same word in their domain names as long as none violate a trademark. Until then, domania rules the Web.
The words to the text:
to advertise
to flatter
outrageous ,
profit ,
tag ,
fellow , ; F; ,
to own , ()
recently ,
to fetch ,
reportedly
to issue ,
to charge , ,
infringement ,
to claim , ,
similar ,
will , ,
to follow ,
to tack ,
to include ,
to fund ,
to propose ,
prudent ,
to stagger , ;
governance , ,
to count , ,
value , ,
smart
to violate , ,
