.com is the most desirable TLD by far and also one of the least expensive.
.io, .me, .shop, .info, .site are all more, often significantly more.
Like everyone else I would love less expensive .com prices but honestly Verisign could 10x the cost of .com and only lose a mild percentage of registrations.
It’s also the most exhausted. The min char available now is in the 7 range. Prefixes and/or suffixes and even hyphens are being used to find land. It’s brutal.
Hence, a x100 price hike on .com would ensure that low-cost domain parking is squeezed out.
It’s not linear. A domain at $2000, which costs the squatter $14 a year, would certainly go down by 75% if it costed the squatter $200 a year. Because the prospect of keeping it for 10 years goes from $140 to $2000, so the seller would make more benefit selling at $500 today than $2500 in 10 years.
A squatter who’s squatting 1000 domain would go from $14k a year to $1m.
Yeah, no. That's entirely contrary to the point of the domain name system. It was always designed with a capitalistic, first-come-first-served, mentality. Stake claim to your domain and hold it. The issue is those domains that are parked and never used should be forfeit, recycled back into the pool. DNS should work both ways. You're free to add records, so long as they can verify usage. It's the last part that isn't effective right now. Some way to prove that it's being used other than a parking service. Anything but a parking service.
A few times I've given up squatting on a domain simply because I thought someone else would probably do better with the domain name. I was right a few times. A few made it into the hands of martech unfortunately but some of my gaming domains have now grown into decent sites under the current stewardship. It makes me happy.
I also think there should be a gTLD for people. You're own personal domain, that's yours, and no one else's, for life. You're free to post up whatever within the law of your land. We already have things like social security numbers and the like. Why not have http://john.jingle.heimer.schmitt.id? Apple thought about this a long time ago and registered me.com with the thought that every apple customer would have <customer>@me.com (which they do!). There's no clear way around this mess other than more gTLD's.
"Yeah, no. That's entirely contrary to the point of the real estate system. It was always designed with a capitalistic, first-come-first-served, mentality. Stake claim to your plot of land and hold it. The issue is those plots that are used for parking and never used should be forfeit, recycled back into the pool."
See how it sounds when you just change it from domains to real estate?
It would also make a lot of legitimate .com owners have to give up their domains. IDK that I would be able to pay that much for the domain I own for my personal blog
I bought mine for about 100$ for 10 years which is about 10$ a year. If it went 10x times the price, then it would be $1000 that I would owe when it comes time to renew
People, do personal blogs belong on .com? Typically not a commercial endeavour, unless you are consultants, and even then... They much better belong under a country tld, or at worst, .blog, .perso or .me (Montenegro, but it’s about me).
Has anyone REALLY followed the naming convention in the past 30 years? Nobody is going to visit your blog if it ends in .blog. People expect .com or at the most radical, .net. Raising prices x10 ain't the answer. All it does is make it harder for the little guy to get a not-spammy sounding website up and running.
There are still some good 6 letter names out there, if you're willing to use a brandable (made-up) word. Some I randomly made just now: pletha.com encryx.com oxiply.com
1. Get word lists for many languages, as well as vulgar word lists.
2. Generate Markov models for each word list, to generate words and score how much they sound like a regular or vulgar word in each language.
3. Make a list of words that sound like they could be a word in many different languages, but are not words and do not sound like vulgar words.
4. Find which of these words aren't domain names yet.
This is a logical approach until you have to explain how you came up with the name “Themicals”. If you’re selling a SaaS product maybe things like “Onychodon” may be a good fit but would kill you in the elevator pitch.
Btw, both of those names were made with Markov as you described.
.io, .me, .shop, .info, .site are all more, often significantly more.
Like everyone else I would love less expensive .com prices but honestly Verisign could 10x the cost of .com and only lose a mild percentage of registrations.