Domain Squatters Suck

So you get a great idea (well an ok idea anyway) and think of a cool domain name that would be perfect - easy to remember and fitting the site well. You go to register the domain and one of three things happen:

1. You find out someone is using the domain for a similar service/product
2. You find out someone is using the domain for an unrelated service/product
3. You find someone has registered the domain and is either not using it at all or just has a parking page up

In my mind the most frustrating result is #3. Domain squatters are people who register a domain without any real intention of using it for anything useful. They may park the domain and hope to get a bit of traffic that will click on some ads or they may be looking to sell the domain to someone for a profit.

Technically there’s nothing wrong with this. They’re not typo-squatting - which is registering a domain that might by a typo for a common domain name. They’re not (necessarily) registering a domain name that a big brand would want and trying to hold it for a large ransom. But what they’re doing does stifle development.

Conventional wisdom says that a first mover can brand a name that’s completely unrelated to the product/service they’re selling - like Amazon for books - but people who follow are better off with a descriptive name like bookstore.com. That latter one by the way is used by (what I’d consider) a domain squatter.

I suppose it’s fully within the spirit of American (and world wide Internet) capitalism to want to make a bit of money in a fairly easy way. I just wish the practice didn’t tie up useful domain names for less than useful purposes.

And yes, this all stems for the fact that I had an idea and thought of the perfect name only to find it was registered and leads to a “this domain may be for sale” page. It’s just a dumb little parody site I’d like to do so I’m not really willing to spend a lot on the domain but I guess I’ll contact the owner and find out what they want for the ransom.