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Friday 24 October 2014

Domain name ripoff

I just got an email from Network Solutions. I have a domain name, drsolly.com. Recently, they gave me, for free, drsolly.biz and drsolly.xyz. I neither asked for, or wanted, either of these. Now they're offering "the perfect new domain extension for you .GAL ". They don't explain why it's perfect.  Google found me this:  "The domain extension .GAL is meant to help Galicia strengthen its image online while fostering a community hub for Galicia and informing the international community about their culture, language, and customs"

Why would I want drsolly.gal? Or indeed drsolly.biz? After the free period of a year ran out, they started emailing me suggesting that I renew it - at a cost, of course.

Here's how it's a ripoff.

Suppose you own a well-known brand, such as christmas.com (which is, of course, owned ny someone). And you're trading nicely under the brandname of "Christmas". How would you feel if someone else registered christmas.biz, or christmas.xyz. Or christmas.gal.

You wouldn't like it. But the only way to stop it from happening, is to own those yourself. So you stump up $10 per year for each of those domain names.

$30 isn't much to protect your brand. But the problem is, it doesn't stop there. There's everything from christmas.aaa to christmas.zzz, , and that's $175,760 per year. Add in the digits 0 to 9, and you get to $466,560. That's just the tree letter extensions., At four letters, that's $17 million. At five letters, $600 million.

 All these additional domain extensions are not necessary. If they didn't exist, no-one would suffer. All they do, is generate revenue for the owner of the extension.

And I have no idea why Network Solutions think I'm located in Galicia. Actually, they know perfectly well I'm in the UK, since they have my address on record.

The whole thing is just a way to extract money from gullible companies. And by the way, christmas.xyz is available for only $12.99 per year!

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