mway’s blog

Once upon a time, I had dealings with BuyDomains.com.  By “I had dealings”, I mean that I was interested in a domain and inquired about it once I saw that it was a ubiquitous generic search page, and was then told that it would cost me thousands of dollars.  I had reps trying to negotiate with me, set up payment plans, and commit to paying exorbitant amounts of money.  If this has ever happened to you, I’m sure you are currently commiserating.

Personally, I believe in old fashioned business models.  You know, the kind where you do something, then people pay you for the fact that you actually did something for them.  There’s something about not working hard for your money that really, really bothers me – thus, I would like to mention, for the record, that domain squatters are my mortal enemies.  Why?  Because they do nothing, and charge you ridiculous amounts of money for it.  They register a domain, put up one of their completely retarded and utterly pointless search pages, and then put a 4-5 digit price tag on it, just because they can.  Some people will say, “but that’s legit – they’re making money, they got there first; if they can get someone to pay that, more power to them”.  I say fuck those people and their domain squatter loving ways, if we’re being honest here.  The friend of my enemy is also my enemy.  Er, I think it’s supposed to be the other way around, but whatever.

Anyway – imagine that you are in a startup, and you have a great thing going. You’ve worked hard on your business model, you have everything mapped out, you have a great product, and you’re ready to start working on your web presence.  I’d estimate that at least 7 out of 10 (maybe more) companies in this situation will be thwarted by people just sitting on their top few domain choices, just waiting for someone to buy into the stupidity of the squatter business model and shell over some cash.  It’s bullshit.

If you ask me, domain squatting is much akin to spam – both are totally worthless and a complete detriment to the web.  They take up space, obstruct and obfuscate the concept of discovery and possession, and are just really slimy ways of doing business.  If you are a domain squatter yourself, contact me so I can personally berate you.

Now that I got that out, I’m going to go have a beer and celebrate today’s Situation team win.