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This is a repost of a guest editorial I wrote for Domain Name News.

When one looks at the track record of introducing new Top Level Domains it is perplexing to see where all the enthusiasm around unlimited new TLDs comes from. So far every attempt to roll one out owes it’s sustenance to purely defensive registrations (.biz, .info) or else it’s degraded into an utter fracas (.jobs) or just plain flopped (.pro)

The latest TLD that isn’t a country code tarting itself up as a pseudo-generic is probably a good indicator of what to expect going forward: .xxx – reviled by the industry it extorts , err, purports to serve and first new TLD that we are seriously considering making a conscious decision not to “grab our name before somebody else does!”. I’m certain it won’t be the last. I believe one of the first things we will see as all this unfolds is a buyers strike in defensive regs. Once that happens everything will go sideways.

So despite the near frenzied hype around these things, I have already gone on record to predict failure for the vast majority of them.

The forthcoming onslaught of TLDs can be divided into roughly three categories: Read more »

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It has been with interest I’ve watched the discussions about being dropped from Google over the last day. It seems as if the Epik website network has been dropped from the search engine listings. I never really looked at Epik’s offerings, so I don’t have an opinion on it. I think Rob Monster generally has something intelligent to say in his blog. In any case, as one commenter put it:

guess that will send them into bankruptcy. Once google cans you its over.

And I thought, my god, what a horrible position to be in. The reason this topic is so relevant to me is because last week we realized here at the office that easyDNS had gotten delisted from Google for over a month! The amazing thing about it was that we didn’t even notice.

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I was going to comment directly on Domain Stryker’s article about Godaddy’s vs NetSol’s respective price tags, until I read that he was putting me on the spot to say something half clueful about it over here

My initial comment was to the key differences between the prospect of Godaddy being bought for 1 Billion today and Verisign’s purchase of Network Solutions for 28B back in the dotcom heyday was this: Network Solutions included the registries for .COM, .NET and .ORG.

ICANN later forced Verisign to divest out of the registrar side if they wanted to renew their contract for the registry (and they were also forced to let go of .ORG as well)

So for 28B, Verisign got the .COM and .NET registries, for what looks like in perpetuity. No matter how big Godaddy ever gets, at $8.88 a domain or so, they will always be paying the lions share of it to Verisign (well, for .COM and .NET’s)

That’s not to say Verisign got a bargain on NetSol. They locked up the registry, but given the times, everybody was paying nosebleed valuations for everything, but consider this:

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A lot of people want to “invest” in websites and domain names. As value investors we have the same requirements for an online investment as we do for an offline one or a publicly traded equity:

• We can buy it for less than it’s intrinsic worth
• Safety of principal combined with reasonable return
• A durable competitive advantage or a wide-moat

Between these three simple criteria, we can eliminate probably 99% of the “opportunities” we see out there to “invest” in a web business or a domain name….

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