Domain Registration Related News
Domains that endure
September 2005
Over the past couple of weeks, two radically different hosting
stories have floated across my transom. It's hard to imagine two
stories more disparate than the rise of the .info domain and the
devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, but a strange quirk of timing
meant that these two items appeared on the radar at about the same
time. And they embrace two enduring truths about the Internet: some
things attract a lot of attention for no readily apparent reason, and
some things endure against all odds.
About a year ago, the .info domain space experienced a huge growth
spurt. A combination of knockdown prices and smart marketing, along
with a brief period in which registrars literally gave away .info
domains caused a massive spike in registrations. Between September
2004 and February of this year, the number of .info domains more than
doubled. According to one source, there were more than 32 million
.info domain names, only slightly less than the names in the .com
space, and about three times the number of .biz and other domains.
Some of these domains have been branded pretty well--the best
example is probably New York's subway authority at MTA.info, which is
the obvious place to look for transportation information in Skyscraper
City. But honestly, is anybody else really making much use of these
domains? Right now, the people who gave away .info domains are sending
out renewal notices. Are people going to pay 15 bucks to keep them?
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