No surprise to some of us.
BTW, is anyone in ALAC -- or the broader community -- checking whether the average price of resale domains is going up or down? Hard to believe it's going up. With all the new gTLDs onboard, is domaining still seen as a worthwhile investment? Was it ever?
Over the last few years I've been involved with numerous domain name acquisitions by companies and individuals. A number of patterns have emerged.
In almost every case:
- The dozen most logical names were taken by squatters and otherwise unused.
- The would-be registrant did not buy any of the squatted names.
- In some cases they enquired about the price, which was often more than an order of magnitude beyond what they were willing to pay, and they had a good laugh.
- In some cases their choice to bypass the squatted name would ensure that the name would forever stay unsold. They had registrations and/or trademarks that would immediately have any subsequent buyer subject to a UDRP complaint.
- Nobody even made an effort to negotiate the price down, determined to be not worth the bother
- There's no fear anymore using hyphens within domain names. The introduction of hyphens always yields a usable registry-fresh domain. This discovery usually increases the entertainment value of the original squatter's price.
I've always had the opinion that domain resale was a massive scam, and that the practise was long-term harmful to ICANN and broader use of domains as identification. Indeed the practise of one of the few that extracts value from (rather than add value to) the Internet. Furthermore, it has led to many of the most potentially-useful names being unused. As a result, "memorable" Internet domains have slipped from "need to have" to "nice to have" to "I'll take anything moderately close because it's not a primary source of identification".
I look forward to the day when domainer portfolios inevitably achieve the same value as postage-stamp collections have now.