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\n \n );\n}",[],[184,269],"93be493b-8e77-409a-aa4d-8c0e51217b5a","Newsletter.tsx","73195508-6d39-11f0-b0e0-0224a6c84d84",651,["D",1788191299060],27,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nimport { unsubscribeUrl } from \"../utils.ts\";\n\ninterface NewsletterProps {\n webUrl: string;\n Content: JSX.Element;\n toEmail: string;\n token: string;\n}\n\nexport default function Newsletter(props: NewsletterProps) {\n const { webUrl, Content, toEmail, token } = props;\n const unsubLink = unsubscribeUrl(toEmail, token);\n\n return (\n \n

\n You’re receiving this email because you signed up for the newsletter\n leading up to my book,{\" \"}\n \n dot com et al: The Secret Life of Internet Domains.\n {\" \"}\n You can also read this newsletter on the web.\n

\n\n \n\n \n \n );\n}",[],[184,277],"e6640a98-2c92-4417-894e-702cff9c323d","Confirm.tsx","bcfca484-6246-11f0-97ca-0224a6c84d84",626,["D",1785525258821],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport const confirmSubject = \"Confirm your email for dot com et al\";\n\ninterface ConfirmProps {\n email: string;\n token: string;\n}\n\nexport default function Confirm({ email, token }: ConfirmProps) {\n const link = `https://dotcom.press/verify?email=${\n encodeURIComponent(email)\n }&token=${token}`;\n\n return (\n \n \n

Hey,

\n Thanks for subscribing to the mailing list for my book,{\" \"}\n dot com et al: the secret life of domains.\n

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\n \n \n );\n}\n",[],[184,286],"d2f1023a-7ae2-11f0-9e92-0224a6c84d84","Yu.tsx","cfd30db6-7ae0-11f0-bad3-0224a6c84d84","4dc46260-6d3a-11f0-b373-0224a6c84d84",210,["D",1755377506855],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Yu() {\n return (\n

Eminent domains

\n \n Eminent domain\n {\" \"}\n refers to a government’s right to seize land for public use, paying its\n owner “just compensation” in return. This power extends to a country’s\n digital land—its domain—not explicitly by law but in practice.\n

\n Every two-letter domain extension used by websites (e.g.{\" \"}\n .uk, .ca, .io,{\" \"}\n .me) belongs to a country. These extensions are called{\" \"}\n country code top-level domains, or ccTLDs, and when you buy one\n you are trusting that country to keep the lights on and allow you to\n keep using it. So really, they are eminent domains{\" \"}\n that could be taken away at any moment.\n

\n Like, just last year Afghanistan shut down many .af{\" \"}\n domains without warning, including{\" \"}\n \n queer dot af\n {\" \"}\n and Wes Bos’s bos dot af{\" \"}\n (which he talked about on a podcast episode,{\" \"}\n \n The Taliban Stole My Domain\n ). In 2021,{\" \"}\n \n Notion briefly went dark\n {\" \"}\n when its Somalian notion dot so domain stopped working.\n {\" \"}\n \n Artsy switched domains\n {\" \"}\n after its Syrian-administered art dot sy{\" \"}\n went down in 2013 during the Syrian civil war. In 2010,{\" \"}\n \n Libya started seizing .ly domains\n {\" \"}\n without notice for violating Libyan law and Islamic morality. And now\n the popular{\" \"}\n \n .io could be in jeopardy\n {\" \"}\n after Britain ceded sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.\n

\n Each ccTLD has its own history, none more sensational than that of{\" \"}\n .yu (that I’ve read about, at least). Yugoslavia’s{\" \"}\n .yu{\" \"}\n is dead, and its story is a dramatic crossover of geopolitical and early\n internet history.\n

Yugoslavia’s stolen, splintered, then silent .yu

\n The tl;dr is that, over the course of two decades, .yu{\" \"}\n for Yugoslavia split into .si for Slovenia,{\" \"}\n .hr for Croatia, .ba{\" \"}\n for Bosnia and Herzegovina, .mk for North Macedonia,{\" \"}\n .me for Montenegro, and .rs{\" \"}\n for Serbia. It was a long and winding road of war, theft, and\n technological innovation.\n

\n In 1989, trailblazing Slovenian computer scientist Borka Jerman-Blažič\n registered the .yu{\" \"}\n domain from her lab in Ljubljana. This was two years before the Web was\n invented, two years before the first website. Back then domains were\n used for things like email between and within academic institutions and\n research labs.\n

\n A couple years later, Jerman-Blažič (I’ll call here BJB from here on\n out) came back all excited from a computing conference in Santa Fe, NM\n and connected Yugoslavia to the global internet as soon as she could.\n That was November 1991, and it meant Yugoslavia was just the 16th\n country in the world connected to the internet. BJB said herself:\n

\n
\n Just as Vint Cerf is considered the father of the internet, one could\n say I am the mother of the internet in Yugoslavia, the mother of this\n domain.\n
\n

\n In the meantime, though, Slovenia and Croatia had declared independence\n from Yugoslavia (June of ’91). BJB reported in an interview ten years\n ago¹{\" \"}\n that Slovenia’s internet connection is how word spread of the conflict,\n leading to UN sanctions against Serbia, which in turn cut off Serbia's\n communications around Europe, leaving its people in the dark. At one\n point bombing by Yugoslav army fighter planes in Slovenia also took down\n Slovenia's email and phone lines.\n

\n After declaring independence, Slovenia got approval for{\" \"}\n .si, but before it went live they got impatient. On a\n Sunday in July ’92,{\" \"}\n \n a group of Slovenian scientists broke into BJB’s lab, stole the{\" \"}\n .yu{\" \"}\n domain records, and cut her line to the network with scissors^{\n 2\n}\n . It took BJB several months to regain access to the internet\n (which puts my experience last Friday into perspective when I was miffed\n that Spectrum was down for a few hours).\n

\n I’ll save the full story—and related ones, like the Soviet Union's\n vestigial dark corner of the web,{\" \"}\n .su—for the book, but to speedrun the rest of{\" \"}\n .yu’s splintering and ultimate silence:\n

\n 1994: Serbia (then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia{\" \"}\n with Montenegro) gets back online by recouping .yu\n
2002: Serbia and Montenegro stop using the name Yugoslavia
2006: Montenegro declares independence
\n 2007: Serbia and Montenegro got their own ccTLDs, .rs and\n {\" \"}\n .me (which Montenegro makes good money on, btw)\n
\n 2010: .yu is officially retired\n

\n Yugoslavia came online during a time of political turmoil. The internet\n was so new that it couldn’t—and didn’t have the rules—to keep up with\n the changing of nations. The internet is a bit more resilient for it,\n but we’re left with lost artifacts:\n

\n
\n Over 4,000 websites, some of the earliest examples of internet culture\n from the region, suddenly became inaccessible via their original\n domain. For many, the deletion of .yu represented the final loss of\n the former country, the erasure of its digital identity...With the\n deletion of .yu, historians and researchers lost access to websites\n that contained important historical records. Gone are firsthand\n accounts of the NATO bombing and the Kosovo War; the mailing lists\n that scientists used to update their colleagues on the progress of the\n conflict; nostalgic forums and playful virtual nation\n experiments.³\n
\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) BJB: “When the war began, many Slovenian scientists started\n sending emails abroad with details of what was going on here...through\n the BITNET network gateway in Paris. These emails reached various\n universities and friends with internet connections, who then informed\n the public. It allowed for a somewhat different picture of happenings\n in Yugoslavia to come out. Serbia had misfortunes, of course, due to\n its aggression against Croatia and Bosnia. This resulted in sanctions\n from the UN Security Council. Among other things, this meant cutting\n them off from the BITNET network...I warned that it would have really\n bad consequences if they disconnected the line. People in Serbia were\n already living under a constant information blockade, as the Milošević\n regime was in charge of all the TV stations. I explained how the\n computer network served as a link to the world, enabling an exchange\n of opinions and helping to inform at least the intellectual circles,\n but they wouldn’t listen to me, and the line was blocked. I believe\n this happened in late 1992.” - How does one connect a country to the\n internet? Aleksandra Domanović. 2014-05-23.{\" \"}\n \n https://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/may/23/interview-Borka-Jerman-Blazic\n .\n \n

\n \n (2) BJB: “During one weekend in July 1992, the people who were later\n employed by ARNES broke into my laboratory and, using scissors, cut\n off the line connecting my computers to the switch located in the\n cellar of the institute, then copied the zone file for .yu. The next\n day, on Monday morning, I saw what had happened, the lines being cut\n off and the computer emptied! ...After several months, I managed to\n get a new subdomain and connected my computers to the internet again.”\n Ibid.\n \n

\n \n (3) Yugoslavia’s Digital Twin. Kaloyan Kolev. 2014-05-23.{\" \"}\n \n https://www.thedial.world/articles/news/issue-9/yugolsav-wars-yu-domain-history-icann\n .\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,294],"newsletters","9dd9125a-6d3a-11f0-8d86-0224a6c84d84","Wordle.tsx","5174dc8c-6d3a-11f0-9248-0224a6c84d84",162,["D",1753875897216],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Wordle() {\n return (\n

\n Back in December, I wrote a short blog post titled{\" \"}\n dot com et al, planting a few of the seeds that are now\n growing into a book. I was writing about how all the short .com{\" \"}\n domains are already taken and wondering where that leaves us. I wrote:\n

\n
\n The main problem is availability. As an experiment, I typed four adjacent words into Cloudflare’s domain\n registrar: bean.com, beans.com, beanie.com, and{\" \"}\n beanies.com. To no surprise, none are available. But they’re not really all taken.\n {\" \"}\n beans.com serves a very simple static website.{\" \"}\n beanie.com is available for $200k, and both{\" \"}\n bean.com and beanies.com{\" \"}\n redirect. So it’s possible that all four of those are available, for a price. In my experience, the vast\n majority of dot com domains for valid English words less than about 8 characters are already spoken for.\n That’s a very unscientific hunch, but more often than not I have to think outside of the box when buying a\n domain.\n
\n

\n Now that I'm turning over domain stones full time, I decided to explore that hunch a bit more scientifically.\n To do that, I ran an experiment using the word list from Wordle¹, which felt like a goldilocks\n sample size of common 5-letter English words. For each word I wanted to know:\n

\n \n Does someone already own the .com domain?\n \n
\n If yes, does it serve a real website?\n
\n If it's for sale, what's the asking price?\n

\n There are 2,315 Wordle answers and 10,657 valid guesses in the original version of the game created by Josh\n Wardle. Josh whittled down the answer list himself, removing words most of us probably haven't heard of (like\n yabby and yobby) then randomizing the order without looking so that he and his partner could play, sans\n spoilers. Back before the New York Times bought the game, you could trivially see all past and future answers\n with a couple clicks in your browser. This wasn't an oversight by Josh, btw—you'd only spoil the game for\n yourself by looking ahead. So I found that original source code in the Wayback Machine²{\" \"}\n and copied the word list. I chose the answer list rather than the guess list because I think it's fair to say\n domains like zuppa.com, zurfs.com, and zuzim.com{\" \"}\n wouldn't be all that sought after³.\n

Taken

\n For the experiment, I first wrote a program to go through each word and check whether its .com\n {\" \"}\n domain is available. For technical reasons, I inserted a half second delay between each query⁴, so\n that means over 20 minutes of domain searching that my computer did for me while I cooked dinner (tacos).\n

\n Unsurprisingly, 0 of 2,315 Wordle solutions have an available dot com domain in the primary registrar market.\n

Parked

\n So how many of these domains serve real websites? chess.com, which{\" \"}\n \n Erik Allebest bought in 2005 for $55k in a bankruptcy sale\n , has over 8 million daily active players. awake.com redirects to Amazon because it was{\" \"}\n \n among the company names Jeff Bezos considered\n . floss.com is unused (fittingly, I guess).\n

\n To check each domain, I wrote some code to do the equivalent of entering the domain in your browser address\n bar and quickly judging if it's a real website⁵. The heuristics I used to judge what's \"real\" are\n imperfect but should be directionally correct. And even if the criteria were more precise, it'd still be hard\n to decide what's real (like the cat sticker on karma.com). Here's what I found:\n

Only a third (800ish) of the 2,315 domains serve \"real\" websites
Lots of parked domains (probably the majority) are used to solicit offers
Many sites are scraping pennies by plastering up Google ads

\n So most of these domains are unused and held by investors waiting for their big payday. How much are they\n hoping for?\n

Asking

\n Not a single Wordle domain is available for purchase directly, but we can turn to the aftermarket for the ones\n that are parked. Manually searching asking prices one by one would take too long, so I worked with a domain\n provider to search programmatically⁶. Here's what I dug up:\n

234 of the 2,315 domains (~10%) are listed for sale on the aftermarket
The average asking price is just under $600k
\n The median asking price is ~$115k (averaging atone.com for $113k and shown.com\n {\" \"}\n for ~$116.5k)\n
\n The most expensive domain is $16.7m for craze.com\n
\n The cheapest domain is just $269 for dumpy.com\n

\n Like my search for \"real\" websites, these findings are imprecise but broadly representative. I would bet a\n substantial number of domains not listed aftermarket are in fact for sale.\n

\n Other asking prices that caught my eye include lying.com for $30k, eight.com{\" \"}\n for $3.5m, and aunty.com{\" \"}\n for $60k. These prices are, of course, negotiable. I can't imagine anyone paying more for{\" \"}\n craze.com than OpenAI paid for chat.com{\" \"}\n a couple years ago, for example. In the book I'll cover how these aftermarkets work and what shady behavior\n goes on behind the scenes.\n

\n It's a bummer that so many of these pithy domains are parked by squattors running ads or waiting for a\n well-funded company to come along and make a compelling offer. I don't like it, but I don't know that it's\n unfair. It's not all that different from buying up land in the physical world and waiting around for an offer\n you can't refuse. This is something I'll keep turning over in my head as I work on the book, and I'm curious\n to hear what you think.\n

Reply

\n Thanks for reading! If you have a minute, reply and/or forward to a friend who might be interested. I'll shape\n the book around what people are interested in, so I'd love to hear what resonates, what doesn't, and what open\n questions you have. Or just reply with your Wordle score from today (I barely escaped with a 6/6).\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) If you've never heard of or played Wordle, I'd take five and go play at{\" \"}\n nytimes.com/games/wordle. If you only have\n five minutes to either play Wordle or read my email, I'd go with Wordle. It's a wildly popular game that\n caught the world by storm, and who knows if my book will be any good.\n \n

\n \n (2) For example, you can play the Wordle puzzle from February 1, 2022 at{\" \"}\n \n web.archive.org/web/20220201/powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle\n . I won't spoil the word of that day (I guessed in 4/6), but you can spoil it for yourself by inspecting\n the source code.\n \n

\n \n (3) After writing this sentence, I naturally grew curious whether those domains were in fact sought after.\n {\" \"}\n zuppa.com and zuzim.com are owned (but unused), and zurfs.com{\" \"}\n is owned and on sale for $1,888 on GoDaddy. Go figure.\n \n

\n \n (4) For the curious programmers among you, I added the 500ms delay to play nice with Vercel's 120 req/min\n rate limit on{\" \"}\n api.vercel.com/v4/domains/status. I'm glad that Vercel exposes their domain availability search\n in a public endpoint. Few registrars do! To run more experiments like this in the future, though, I'll\n probably write a lower level bash script that uses command line tools like dig for DNS lookup.\n \n

\n \n (5) To do this, I used heuristics like: does the request return a 404 or redirect? Does it include a title\n and meta description? Is the response content sufficiently large? For future experiments, I may try feeding\n each HTML response into a classifier LLM to better gauge legitimacy.\n \n

\n \n (6) The domain search provider I worked with has not yet made their API public, but I'll plug it and share\n my code when they do.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,304],"6012b2b4-7e8d-11f0-8ef1-0224a6c84d84","Wholesale.tsx","39b3bae6-7e8d-11f0-a46a-0224a6c84d84",245,["D",1755780611568],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Wholesale() {\n return (\n

\n If you've ever bought a domain, you know what a registrar{\" \"}\n is. It's where you buy a domain. GoDaddy pays millions for 30 second\n Super Bowl ads, so actually pretty much everyone knows what a registrar\n is. What you might not know is what a registry is.\n

\n If you do know what a registry is, sorry—the point is that most people\n don't. And I'm not saying there isn't more to registrars. They do more\n than sell domains: they upsell you email hosting, website building, and\n plenty more¹. Some registrars even dabble in questionable\n behavior, like investing in their own domain portfolio using{\" \"}\n your{\" \"}\n search queries to decide which domains are sought after and therefore\n valuable. There are thousands of registrars, and their history has\n plenty of controversy and intrigue. But I'm not writing about registrars\n (for now—I'll certainly cover them later). I'm writing about their\n lesser known sibling, registries.\n

\n For every top-level domain (TLD) out there—and there are\n thousands—there's a registry that manages it. .com,{\" \"}\n .org, .xyz, .club,{\" \"}\n .ventures: they're all owned and managed by a registry. A\n company called Verisign operates both .com and{\" \"}\n .net. They sell .com domains wholesale to{\" \"}\n registrars{\" \"}\n who turn around and sell them to customers for a (thin) profit^{\n 2\n}. The current going rate Verisign charges registrars for a dot com\n is $10.26 per year.{\" \"}\n \n Verisign maintains over 170 million registrations of .com\n {\" \"}\n and .net{\" \"}\n domains, which means it earns over $1.5 billion in annual revenue from\n registrations alone.³\n {\" \"}\n (Berkshire Hathaway is a longtime Verisign investor, btw.)\n

\n I mentioned there are thousands of TLDs. .you,{\" \"}\n .music, and .now{\" \"}\n are among a dozen or so new TLDs being rolled out this year. So how do\n they come about?\n

\n Domains were something of a wild west in the early- to mid-90s, so in\n 1998 a nonprofit with a mouthful of a name was set up for domain\n governance: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or\n ICANN (pronounced \"I can\" as in \"I can help you get a name for the\n internet\"). Registries sign agreements with ICANN that grant permission\n to run a TLD so long as they meet technical, operational, and financial\n requirements.\n

\n Registries bid for rights to TLDs in auctions run by ICANN. Sometimes\n they pay a lot. Blogging platform Automattic/WordPress⁴{\" \"}\n paid $19 million for the rights to .blog{\" \"}\n in 2016. They made a big bet that bloggers would pay up for memorable\n domains. And they decide how much to charge. For example,{\" \"}\n pete.blog{\" \"}\n is a \"premium\" domain, so they're charging $500/yr for it. Whereas{\" \"}\n petemillspaugh.blog is only $20/yr. But{\" \"}\n pete.blog{\" \"}\n is available! No Pete out there wants it, especially when there are\n expressive alternatives like pete.garden for $24/yr and\n {\" \"}\n pete.football{\" \"}\n for $18/yr. Even though WordPress is still widely used, I have a hard\n time believing Automattic made back $20 million on .blog.\n

\n The range of TLD prices is kind of shocking. A registry for REITs (Real\n Estate Investment Trusts) sells .reit{\" \"}\n domains for a cool $1,000 per year. Another registry charges just $11\n yearly for .xyz{\" \"}\n domains. Back to Verisign, they've caught backlash from recent price\n hikes on{\" \"}\n .com. They have a contract allowing price increases up to\n 7% per year for four years, and they've pretty much scraped up every\n last penny of that. In their defense, secondary market sales of dot coms\n are as strong as ever, and they are a for-profit company trying to\n return money to shareholders. But it's murky. ICANN is a nonprofit whose\n mission is to \"ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet\",\n and ICANN is who negotiates agreements with registries like Verisign.\n But, but, but—Verisign heavily funds ICANN. Verisign is ICANN's largest\n financial backer. As anti-monopoly policy wonk Laurel Kilgour puts it:\n

\n
\n Verisign's monopoly over the .com top level domain is old enough to\n vote and drink⁵.\n
\n

\n Verisign has been around since the early internet days, and there's a\n lot more to unpack there, which I'll save for another day. In the\n meantime, what about the other registries?\n

\n For some registries, it's all they do. That registry selling{\" \"}\n .xyz{\" \"}\n domains that I mentioned earlier is called XYZ, and they own the rights\n to 35 TLDs, like .lol, .baby,{\" \"}\n .mom, .dad, .ceo, and{\" \"}\n .audio. They say on their website that they've sold over 4\n million domains. Another registry called Donuts raised over $100 million\n in venture capital to buy{\" \"}\n hundreds of TLDs\n {\" \"}\n (including what I think are some pretty good ones—like{\" \"}\n .email, .space, .band,{\" \"}\n .pizza—and ones I've used—like .life for{\" \"}\n weeksofyour.life).\n

\n But there are also registries you've actually heard of—just not for\n their registry business. Google runs a registry. So does Amazon.\n Sometimes they bid for TLDs that'll become available to the public, like\n Google paying $25 million for rights to{\" \"}\n .app, but other times they acquire TLDs for internal or\n branded use, like Amazon's .prime.\n

\n Some TLDs get stuck in closed systems and long-running litigation, like\n Amazon's ownership of{\" \"}\n .book. Amazon won the rights without any intention to sell\n {\" \"}\n .book{\" \"}\n domains to the public, which Barnes & Noble and other booksellers\n have challenged as too generic of a term to be locked away for Amazon's\n exclusive use. I would've loved to have a .book{\" \"}\n domain for this book. Google is also up against legal challenges to its\n bid for generic TLDs, like .search{\" \"}\n (which Amazon also applied for!).\n

\n I haven't even touched on registries for ccTLDs (country code top-level\n domains, like .de for Germany and .jp{\" \"}\n for Japan). Some countries run their own registries, and others partner\n with registries to capitalize on what can be a meaningful asset (as{\" \"}\n .ai has been for Anguilla, .me for Montenegro,\n {\" \"}\n .tv{\" \"}\n for Tuvalu, and many more). Anguilla switched to a partnership this year\n with a registry I mentioned earlier, Donuts (now called Identity\n Digital), to meet surging demand for its .ai{\" \"}\n domains, for example.\n

Reply

\n There's a lot about registries that I left out here in the interest of\n brevity. Reply with your unanswered questions, curiosities, and\n thoughts. Feedback helps me shape the book into something that resonates\n with you and other readers.\n

\n I'll be on a trip to Canada next week, so my next email won't be until\n September. Speaking of which, NYC friends: I'll be in town the week of\n 9/15! In the meantime, reply and forward to any friends or coworkers who\n you think would be interested in the book.\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) WHOIS proxying, SSL certs, DNS hosting, broker services, auctions,\n etc.\n \n

\n \n (2) Or a loss! Beware the registrars who offer you promotional\n first-year pricing only to crank up the renewal costs once you're tied\n to your domain and lacking time or attention to switch.\n \n

\n \n (3) Revenue isn't quite as simple as the number of registrations\n multiplied by $10.26 because that price changes over time and domain\n buyers can lock in a price for multi-year renewals. Verisign reported\n $1.56b revenue in 2024\n (\n https://investor.verisign.com/news-releases/news-release-details/verisign-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2024-results\n ) and 170.5m registered domains at the end of Q2 2025\n (\n https://investor.verisign.com/news-releases/news-release-details/verisign-reports-second-quarter-2025-results\n ).\n \n

\n \n (4) Automattic is a WordPress hosting provider. WordPress open source\n software runs like a third to half of all websites in the world.\n Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has been the source of heated WordPress\n controversy of late, during which nearly 1 in 10 Automattic employees\n have resigned.{\" \"}\n \n https://theverge.com/2024/9/27/24256361/wordpress-wp-engine-drama-explained-matt-mullenweg\n .\n \n

\n \n (5) Renewing Verisign’s Contract Would Hike Domain Name Prices at 2X\n Inflation Rate, New Economic Liberties Paper Reveals. Laurel Kilgour.\n 7-29-24.{\" \"}\n \n https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/renewing-verisigns-contract-would-hike-domain-name-prices-at-2x-inflation-rate-new-economic-liberties-paper-reveals\n .\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,312],"09f6660e-507f-11f1-ae08-ee650bb23af1","UniqueIdentifiers.tsx","ca842f92-507e-11f1-aa59-ee650bb23af1",575,["D",1778864198307],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function UniqueIdentifiers() {\n return (\n

Unique Identifiers

\n Domains are unique identifiers. If you own radio.garden, no one else\n can. There are many other unique identifiers: IP addresses, phone\n numbers, physical addresses, SSNs, license plates, credit card numbers,\n ISBNs, bar codes, dollar bill serial numbers, human fingerprints. Each\n of these is not like the other: what’s actually inside a unique\n identifier defines what information and value{\" \"}\n it holds.\n

\n Like, you couldn’t sell an IP address{\" \"}\n \n for 70 million dollars\n . Your home address may have a certain cachet, but it’s not the\n address itself that’s valuable—it’s the home, the land, the\n neighborhood. Your domain name doesn’t imply your location, but your\n phone number does. It doesn’t much matter what license plate the DMV\n issues you...unless you add semantic meaning with a vanity plate, which\n {\" \"}\n \n really changes things\n .\n

\n It turns out there can be a lot of information embedded in unique\n identifiers. Deidre Mask wrote a whole book¹,{\" \"}\n The Address Book—amazing title, btw—exploring “What street\n addresses reveal about identity, race, wealth, and power.”\n

\n That they are unique and memorable is the whole point of domain names.\n Domains are easy-to-remember nicknames for IP addresses. And when you\n attach meaningful words to identifiers, people will pay money for them.\n No two domains are exactly alike. An economist would call that an\n “economic singularity,” like an oil painting or a movie or the rights to\n Taylor Swift’s masters recordings, which she bought back from a private\n equity firm a year ago this month². As Milton Mueller wrote\n in his book Ruling the Root,\n

\n
\n No two words or symbols mean exactly the same thing. Hence, no two\n identifiers are perfectly good substitutes for each other in an\n economic sense. (21)\n
\n

\n When it’s important that multiple people can’t claim the same\n identifier, you need a centralized authority to police things. That\n authority for domains is ICANN. To share the internet, everyone needs to\n agree that the ICANN-supervised list of domain names is the one and only\n list (called “the root”). But everyone hasn’t always agreed.\n

\n In 2001, a VC-backed startup named New.net created an alternative root,\n or “alt root.” They created a handful of new top-level domains, like\n .shop, .chat, .kids, and .xxx. New.net was a serious threat to ICANN: at\n one point 20% of internet service providers in the US routed to those\n alternate domains. And even though they ultimately failed, they pushed\n ICANN to change. All four of those extensions I mentioned are now TLDs\n in ICANN’s root (and not without controversy—.xxx is for porn). Other\n alt roots rolled out IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names, i.e. using\n non-Latin scripts), and since then ICANN has dedicated resources to\n delegating its own IDNs. Then there are alt roots controlled by\n governments of authoritarian countries that want to limit communication\n to their own intranet. This phenomenon—the risk of the global internet\n fragmenting—is sometimes referred to by its catchy nickname, “The\n Splinternet.”\n

\n Identifiers like domains are invented out of thin air, with nothing much\n tied to them in meatspace (unlike your home address, say). And yet, when\n you give an identifier semantic meaning, things get artistic,\n commercial, and political. Someone will file a lawsuit over nissan[dot]com,\n someone will pay $15 million for chat[dot]com, and someone will register\n rotatingsandwiches.com to settle the is-a-taco-a-sandwich debate once\n and for all.\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) A whole book? About addresses? Or domains...That’s one reaction I\n get (or infer based on body language) when I tell people what I’m\n writing about. But there’s so much depth in seemingly narrow topics! I\n like exploring that depth of the everyday things under our nose.\n \n

\n \n (2) Thanks and credit to Thomas Clowes for pointing me toward his\n paper on{\" \"}\n \n The economics of domain names (2016)\n {\" \"}\n and Lucien Karpik’s 2010 book, Valuing the Unique: The Economics of\n Singularities.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,320],"8ecf0972-8a4a-11f0-a052-0224a6c84d84","TLDs.tsx","cbc42382-89e4-11f0-9ddc-0224a6c84d84",267,["D",1757071327647],8,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function TLDs() {\n return (\n

\n This year is the 40th anniversary of the internet’s first TLDs:{\" \"}\n .com, .org, .net,{\" \"}\n .gov, .edu, and .mil.\n

\n You know what a TLD—top-level domain—is, whether or not you\n knew the acronym. You use .com{\" \"}\n websites every day, you’ve visited country-based domains like{\" \"}\n .uk, and you might’ve seen newer ones like{\" \"}\n .xyz\n ¹. There are well over a thousand domain extensions. These\n are the “et al” in my working book title, dot com et al{\" \"}\n (which, btw, is not set in stone, so reply with your honest thoughts:\n too literary-sounding, you like the staccato, don’t like the staccato,\n too hard to say aloud, etc.).\n

So how many TLDs are there, actually?

\n I counted up 1,592 from the{\" \"}\n root zone database\n {\" \"}\n on IANA’s website. IANA is part of ICANN (mnemonic: “I can(n) give you a\n name and number on the internet”), and together they are in charge of\n domain governance. Ok cool, so that must be the true number of\n TLDs...but wait, IANA’s website also has a{\" \"}\n \n plaintext file\n {\" \"}\n updated just this morning with 1,439 TLDs. Meanwhile Domainr, the\n ICANN-accredited API provider for domains, has 1,758 TLDs on{\" \"}\n its list. It turns\n out some are retired, others are reserved for future use, and more are\n stuck in disputes².\n

Types of TLDs

Ok, so there are about 1.5k TLDs split into two main buckets:

Generic (gTLD): 1250
Country-code (ccTLD): 316

\n There are also 14 sponsored domains, 11 active test\n {\" \"}\n domains, and one infrastructure{\" \"}\n domain—.arpa—in case you’re double checking my math. And\n 169 of the set are non-Latin alphabet TLDs (called IDNs for\n Internationalized Domain Names—in Arabic, Mandarin, etc.).\n

gTLDs

\n That first batch of TLDs in 1985 brought us the household domain names\n your parents know about. Initially you had to use an appropriate\n extension for your use (.com for commercial,{\" \"}\n .net for internet infrastructure, .org{\" \"}\n for nonprofits), but registrars gave up on enforcing semantics long ago.\n

\n Over the next couple decades there was a slow trickle of new gTLDs, like\n {\" \"}\n .info and{\" \"}\n .biz. Generics got a lot more interesting in the last dozen\n or so years since ICANN opened the flood gates. We went from a couple\n dozen to over a thousand gTLDs—there’s a good chance one exists for your\n occupation, whatever it is you do (.doctor,{\" \"}\n .banker, .lawyer....dentist,{\" \"}\n .florist,{\" \"}\n .ninja). Many generics are owned by municipalities and\n companies, like .taipei and{\" \"}\n .tjmaxx, which in many cases are not open to the public for\n registration.\n

\n It costs $185k to even apply for a new gTLD plus at least $25k annually,\n and registries have bid as much as $135m in auctions for the rights to a\n single TLD³.\n

ccTLDs

\n Country-code TLDs came about in the 80s with the earliest batch of\n generics. As I’ve written about before, these are{\" \"}\n eminent domains{\" \"}\n that countries control, so when you buy one you are trusting that\n country to keep the lights on (and many haven’t, like Afghanistan,\n Syria, Libya, and Somalia).\n

\n ccTLDs are also meaningful assets in many cases, like{\" \"}\n \n Tuvalu’s .tv generating 1/12 of its gross national income\n {\" \"}\n and Anguilla’s even greater .ai{\" \"}\n windfall that has hit the mainstream—Morning Brew ran a{\" \"}\n \n feature story\n {\" \"}\n about it just this week.\n

\n As a reminder, any two-letter TLD is a ccTLD, so as you go about your\n routine keep an eye out for uses. When you see one in the wild you can\n quickly Google “.[tld] domain” to figure out what country it belongs to.\n These often turn up places I could absolutely not pick out on a map, or\n haven’t heard of even. Ask yourself, would I trust this country to\n competently and ethically operate my domain far into the future? (Or ask\n me! I like to research ccTLDs.) In most cases it’s pretty low risk.\n

Is dot com still king?

\n There’s one question I keep turning over in my head and asking others:\n how much does .com matter now that all these TLDs exist?\n

\n Does Paul Graham’s{\" \"}\n Change Your Name{\" \"}\n advice still hold? Is dot com more{\" \"}\n valuable now with a sea of diluted alternatives? There seems to be\n consensus among domain brokers I’ve spoken to or follow online that dot\n com is king, but startup founders and everyday developers like me often\n seem to prefer vanity TLDs. There could be some wishful thinking from\n both camps at play: brokers want commissions from high dollar dot com\n sales; creators want a short, cheap domain that suits their brand.\n

\n If you have an opinion or even a knee jerk reaction to the importance of\n dot com, reply to this email—I am collecting as much data as I can to\n help answer that question (and really, trying to predict the future).\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Cryptographic tangent: you may have also seen .eth\n {\" \"}\n addresses that look like domains. Those are part of{\" \"}\n ENS, or Ethereum Name Service, which\n is a spin on{\" \"}\n DNS\n {\" \"}\n (Domain Name System) but completely separate. Similar to website\n domain-IP pairs, ENS maps .eth{\" \"}\n domains to IP addresses for crypto wallets. Just like you visit{\" \"}\n dotcom.press{\" \"}\n instead of 216.198.79.1, you can send crypto to your drug dealer at\n {\" \"}\n trevor.eth instead of 0x0b08dA7068b73A579Bd5E8a8290f8.\n \n

\n \n (2) The root zone database has 153 “Not assigned” extensions, which\n covers the gap from IANA’s list of valid, operational TLDs\n (1592-1493=153). The unassigned include country codes like{\" \"}\n .eh{\" \"}\n for the disputed Western Sahara territory (that Morocco has tried to\n claim), branded extensions like .bananarepublic{\" \"}\n (that Banana Republic owner Gap has applied for), and test domains\n used to poke and probe DNS. Domainr’s even larger list includes some\n historically reserved testing TLDs like .example and{\" \"}\n .invalid that IANA excludes.\n \n

\n \n (3) That $135m was for .web{\" \"}\n in 2016. Was it worth it? I haven’t seen many .web-sites. $41.5m for\n {\" \"}\n .shop is the second biggest sale to date.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,328],"81538bb8-cfac-11f0-b22e-42dde27851f2","Reddit.tsx","474e9156-cfac-11f0-ba3a-42dde27851f2",420,["D",1764700025942],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Reddit() {\n return (\n

r/domains

\n You can earn a sort of MBA for domains if you spend enough time in{\" \"}\n r/domains{\" \"}\n on Reddit¹.\n

\n \n

Just in the past couple months we have “case studies” on:

\n ccTLD risk:{\" \"}\n \n Any strategic options for a clawed back domain?\n \n
\n Trademark law:{\" \"}\n \n Why didn’t Oreos company purchase Oreos.com?\n \n
\n Valuation:{\" \"}\n \n Half billion+$ company wants a domain I have\n \n
\n Leasing domains:{\" \"}\n \n Domain redirect renting?\n \n

\n It’s not all high quality, of course (see:\n “\n What’s with all the garbage posted in this subreddit?\n ”). You have to be a discerning reader, of course. You don’t trust\n everything you read on Reddit the same way you don’t trust everything a\n language model tells you. Upvotes and downvotes help screen what’s\n legitimate.\n

\n So let’s pick one case study. I think\n “\n Any strategic options for a clawed back domain?\n ” is most interesting. It teaches us a lesson about the risks of\n buying a domain from a country that can take it back at any moment—a\n phenomenon I’ve called{\" \"}\n \n eminent domains\n .\n

Eminent domains

\n Just as the US government can seize private land for public use under\n {\" \"}\n \n eminent domain\n {\" \"}\n law, any government can seize a domain anytime.\n

\n A couple months ago, someone posted a screenshot of an email from\n Porkbun on r/domains along with this caption:\n

\n
\n TL;DR, I bought an incredibly tiny domain I wanted to use as part of a\n company-wide ecosystem for URL shorteners, email addresses, and file\n vanity links. Including TLD, the domain had four characters total;\n advertised as $3.\n
\n
\n Fast forward 5 days, I get this email. It was clawed back citing an\n error and allegedly should have been valued at $7K...Do I even have\n any options for protecting this and getting it back?\n
\n

\n The country is redacted, so we don’t know who to blame. Here’s the meat\n of that Porkbun email:\n

\n
\n We regret to inform you that the registry service provider for{\" \"}\n .◾️◾️ domains has recalled your recent registration of\n {\" \"}\n co.◾️◾️. The registry claims that the price shown for\n this two-letter domain was an error and that it should’ve been listed\n as a premium registration valued at over $7,000.\n
\n
\n While we believe the situation is entirely the fault of the registry\n and its service provider and we disagree with their decision, they are\n unfortunately within their rights to carry out a recall of this\n nature.\n
\n

\n Does OP “have any options for protecting this and getting it back?” The\n short answer is no, probably not. Country-owned ccTLDs are not bound by\n {\" \"}\n ICANN’s bylaws the\n same way gTLDs are. From a top 1% commenter on the subreddit:\n

\n
\n For ccTLDs, ICANN’s policy is pretty much \"do as you please\" and they\n can do this without any registrant recourse. ccTLDs are very high\n risk.\n
\n

\n This risk has bitten domain owners many times before: with{\" \"}\n .ly domains from Libya, .af{\" \"}\n domains from Afghanistan, .sy{\" \"}\n domains from Syria, and so on. Another commenter suggested lawyering up,\n but the more-upvoted response tells us that OP is SOL.\n

\n
\n Registrar here. CcTLDs are subject to the law of the respective\n country. You’d need to take legal action in that country against its\n government. OP would be looking at $100k minimum for a snowflake's\n chance in hell.\n
\n

\n Porkbun ended up issuing a refund and a $100 credit for the registrant’s\n troubles. Porkbun is a fan favorite registrar among developer friends I\n talk to, and this email adds a point in their favor as a trustworthy\n registrar. Or many points:\n

\n
This email made me like porkbun even more.
\n

...

\n
The response from porkbun is such good customer service.
\n

...

\n
\n IMHO good response by porkbun for a very shitty situation that they\n didn’t cause...Confirms that I made a good choice to move my domains\n to them.\n
\n

\n The registrar reputation world must be zero-sum because GoDaddy caught a\n stray in the middle of the Porkbun praise: \"GoDaddy is known [to] buy\n domains you are searching.\" I don’t know if there’s hard evidence of\n GoDaddy doing this, but they definitely do have their own portfolio, and\n I’ve heard that claim before.\n

ccTL;DR

\n The only recourse to a ccTLD case like this seems to be fighting it\n publicly with bad press, which I guess I’m doing here except that we\n don’t know which country is the culprit.\n

\n
\n The best you can do is write an angry blog post and hope they get\n bullied into giving you the domain.\n
\n

\n So what country is this? One commenter hinted, “I’m almost certain I can\n guess which ccTLD this is, as they recently had a change in registry\n management (rights to manage the ccTLD were sold and the new management\n have been hiking up prices).” I have a couple ideas as to who this could\n be, but OP decided to redact the ccTLD “due to WHOIS privacy not being\n active,” so I’ll respect their wishes here.\n

When it comes to eminent domains, buyer beware.

Footnotes

\n \n (1) You can learn a lot by lurking in a subreddit. You can learn even\n more by answering questions in that subreddit (or any online forum,\n really). When someone asks a question that you don’t know the answer\n to, look it up and figure it out, answer, then you know. \"When one\n teaches, two learn.\"\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,337],"0814bba0-3878-4131-a27f-35154713e6f8","PSL.tsx","27087044-a551-11f1-9469-1607ee4eb77e",653,["D",1788191408183],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function PSL() {\n return (\n

The Public Suffix List is “just a list”

\n A couple weeks ago, Sam{\" \"}\n asked me how much I knew about the Public Suffix List. Many people have\n asked me this when they hear I’m writing a book about domains. To date\n my answer has been: not much.\n

\n The Public Suffix List{\" \"}\n has this paradoxical vibe of being pretty casual but rather important.\n The volunteers who maintain the list call it “a globally used resource”\n and warn that any change will affect “tens of millions, perhaps hundreds\n of millions” of people on the internet. But they also say:\n

\n
The PSL is just a list.
\n

\n It really is{\" \"}\n \n just a file\n {\" \"}\n on a public GitHub repository. OK, but I’ll back up—suffix{\" \"}\n here means a domain name ending, like:\n

.com
.co.uk
.omg.lol
.cincinnati.oh.us

\n And public{\" \"}\n means anyone can register a domain under that suffix, like:\n

rotatingsandwiches.com
economics.co.uk
adam.omg.lol
nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us

\n The list is around 10,000 of those public suffixes.\n

Cookies, beer, and pizza

\n The first answer to “why does this list exist?” is: cookies.\n Browsers—Chrome, Safari, Firefox, et al.—look to the PSL to figure out\n whether a domain like evil.co.uk should be able to set a cookie on\n co.uk. Without the PSL, if evil.co.uk set a cookie on co.uk, it could be\n passed on to bank.co.uk. But because co.uk is on the PSL, evil.co.uk\n can’t set that cookie (phew).\n

\n About half of suffixes on the list are run by countries. The .us\n registry, for example, has entries for each state on the list: ak.us for\n Alaska, al.us for Alabama, ar.us for Arkansas, and so on\n (\n how’d they come up with those state abbreviations, anyway\n ?). Italy has hundreds of suffixes under .it. Japan has even more\n than Italy for .jp (like, way more).\n

\n The next thousand or so suffixes on the list are generic top-level\n domains like .com, .app, .beer and .pizza. And finally, about a third of\n suffixes are run by companies. Amazon has a whole bunch. Apple, Google,\n OpenAI, Anthropic, Cloudflare, GitHub, Figma, Shopify, Lovable, Replit,\n Vercel—they all have domains on the list.\n

\n A company requests to add a domain to the PSL when they issue subdomains\n under it. For example, at Val Town we hand out val.run domains to\n users—someone makes a website on garden.val.run and someone else makes\n one on abottom.val.run. Those websites can’t share cookies because we\n submitted val.run to the PSL (royal “we”—it was Tom).\n

\n The list is a shared resource, and the maintainers hint that any company\n serving less than “thousands of users” with their suffix won’t be\n approved.\n

\n
\n Expanding the file size even in small ways increases the overhead for\n everyone.\n
\n

\n Browsers use the PSL for more than just cookie security. They can sort\n or group your browsing history by public suffix, or use it to determine\n whether what you type into the address bar is a search query or a URL.\n Other software uses the PSL, too. Your email provider could use it to\n determine whether to auto-hyperlink the example domains I used above.\n There isn’t, as far as I’m aware, a standard ruleset dictating how\n browsers and other software must use the list, or how quickly they have\n to adopt changes. As the PSL maintainers write, “Browsers do what\n browsers do, diversely, and the PSL is not the boss of them.”\n

Rather important, pretty casual

\n The Mozilla Foundation stewards the Public Suffix List. I am not sure\n how many maintainers actually work for Mozilla, though. They’re\n volunteering under the umbrella of Universal Acceptance, ICANN’s\n initiative to have all domain names equally accepted across the internet\n (example: signup forms should accept valid email addresses with domain\n names in languages and scripts other than English).\n

\n I get the sense from the PSL’s{\" \"}\n \n README\n {\" \"}\n and{\" \"}\n \n Guidelines\n {\" \"}\n that the maintainers are a thinly staffed team of volunteers who are,\n unsurprisingly, burdened with low effort slop. They ask submitters to\n “be extremely thorough and patient.” But I imagine the maintainers are\n the extremely thorough and patient ones, to whom the courtesy isn’t\n always returned.\n

\n It’s kind of hard to believe that important parts of internet\n infrastructure run like this: a plain text file maintained by a group of\n volunteers online. The Domain Name System itself was created to replace\n a centralized list, hosts.txt, with domain names and corresponding IP\n addresses. DNS is remarkably stable, and I’m interested in the human\n work that goes into this sort of thing, expert volunteers maintaining\n these complex systems. But as the maintainers remind us—they repeat it\n four times, actually—the Public Suffix List is, after all, just a list.\n

\n \n P.S. I want to talk to people who work on or with the PSL, or know\n about it. If that’s you (or your coworker/friend/whomever), reply and\n teach me. Tell me what’s interesting or hard or fragile or\n underappreciated.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,345],"21af28ff-452a-4c6e-a486-38033f0d3a9c","Numbers.tsx","dd7bc2f8-8d0b-11f1-bbff-1607ee4eb77e",607,["D",1785522363825],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Numbers() {\n return (\n

Domains by the numbers

\n \n Domain names are words that stand for numbers (IP addresses).\n {\" \"}\n We just crossed 400 million domains registered globally, so I decided to\n write some words about that number—and other numbers.\n

$0

\n The initial cost to register a domain in 1993.\n

\n Domain registration was free when it first opened to the public in the\n early nineties. The internet will probably be pretty niche, anyway,\n right? A journalist for WIRED, Joshua Quittner, registered\n mcdonalds[dot]com in 1994, before which a McDonald’s PR person asked\n him, “Are you finding that the Internet is a big thing?”\n

$0.20

\n \n ICANN’s transaction fee paid by registrars when a domain is\n registered, renewed, or transferred.\n \n

\n Only a couple dimes, sure, but if you take this number and multiply it\n by that other number—400 million domains registered—you get $80 million\n in transaction fees ICANN collects each year. ICANN is a fairly large\n organization—about 450 employees—representing the much larger internet\n community. They pay for three free-to-attend conferences each year to\n convene thousands of people from that community. ICANN has its critics,\n but for my part, the many people I’ve met who work for ICANN are\n competent, kind, and care about the internet.\n

2

\n The number of characters in a ccTLD.\n

\n Any top-level domain you come across with two letters belongs to a\n country. So for example .ai, .io, and .co belong to Anguilla, the\n British Indian Ocean Territory, and Colombia, respectively. Those are\n called{\" \"}\n country code top-level domains, or ccTLDs, and there are 316 of\n them. This is where geopolitics and the internet often intersect, like\n when{\" \"}\n \n Yugoslavia’s .yu went dark\n , or when Afghanistan shut down queer[dot]af.\n

10

\n \n The maximum number of years for which you can register a domain.\n \n

\n Owning your own domain is about the closest you can get to ownership on\n the internet (much more control than a social media account, say). But\n the 10-year maximum renewal period is a reminder that it’s the registry\n that ultimately owns your domain. They can raise prices or change\n policy, and what happens to your domain when you die?\n

$10.26

\n The wholesale price Verisign charges for .com domains.\n

\n On November 1, this will go up to $10.97. Verisign has a contract with\n ICANN and the US Department of Commerce (the NTIA, technically) that\n allows them to raise .com prices by up to 7% for the last four years of\n the six-year contract.\n

13

\n The number of DNS root servers.\n

\n There’s a set of root servers\n {\" \"}\n around the world whose primary job is to store domain-IP pairs^{\n 1\n}. There are only 13 such servers. Technically, it’s 13 IP\n addresses shared by about two thousand actual servers around the world.\n 12 organizations run those 13 root servers, and it’s sort of an odd\n bunch. Verisign runs several dozen—ok, makes sense—, ICANN\n controls a bunch—yeah—, NASA operates a few hundred—\n sure\n —, and—wait a minute—the University of Maryland? UMD runs\n 225 root nameservers all over the world, more than 10% of all root\n servers. The US has the most total root servers within its borders at\n 400ish. China has less than one hundred. Iceland has six. As with any\n resource, the Internet is not evenly distributed.\n

47%

\n \n The percentage of Anguilla’s revenue from .ai domain sales in 2025.\n \n

\n \n Anguilla is the A-Island\n . They’re using .ai proceeds to fund infrastructure, like schools,\n roads, and airports. Hypothetically, Anguilla could even fund a\n Universal Basic Income of ~$2-5k per citizen (kind of like Alaska’s\n oil-funded dividend). They used to have the actual servers on the\n island, but now Identity Digital runs the registry backend.\n

63

\n The maximum length of a domain label.\n

\n A domain name’s label—i.e. the part before the dot—can be no longer than\n 63 characters. In the case of subdomains, you could have more than one\n label—e.g. one.two.three[dot]com—totaling no more than 255 characters.\n This is per RFC 1035, written by DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris in 1987.\n To illustrate that 63 characters is Quite Long Enough, consider for\n example the 60-character title of one of my favorite essays, recast as a\n domain name:\n getting-away-from-pretty-much-already-being-away-from-it-all[dot]com\n

277

\n The number of top-level domains owned by Identity Digital.\n

\n Identity Digital, formerly Donuts, raised $100 million to apply for\n hundreds of top-level domains in 2012. In the years since, they’ve\n bought up other registries to grow their portfolio, which includes the\n TLDs .email, .lgbt, .studio, and .wtf. I even own some of their domains,\n like{\" \"}\n weeksofyour.life. Other\n notable registries include Google with 46 TLDs; Amazon with 51; and XYZ\n with 35.\n

920

\n The RFC that established the initial set of top-level domains.\n

\n In 1984 Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds wrote RFC 920, “Domain\n Requirements,” defining the first TLDs: .com , .org, .gov, .edu, and\n .mil. While .gov, .edu, and .mil are still semantically enforced, .com\n is by now totally detached from its original purpose as a commercial\n namespace. Same goes for .net, added shortly after the RFC was\n published, originally meant for internet{\" \"}\n infrastructure.\n

1,595

\n Top-level domains delegated to the root zone.\n

\n As of today, there are{\" \"}\n \n 1,595 top-level domains in the DNS root\n . Of those, 316 are ccTLDs and 1,250 are gTLDs (g for generic). The\n generics break down further into brand TLDs, like .netflix and .google;\n geoTLDs, like .nyc and .paris; community TLDs, like .kids; and regular\n ole generics for you and me to buy, like .dev and .press (oh, hey). And\n since this is all about numbers, the audit-minded among you may have\n noticed that my math doesn’t yet tie: there are also a handful of\n generic-restricted, sponsored, infrastructure, and test TLDs.\n

1985

\n The year the first domain, symbolics.com, was registered.\n

\n On March 15, 1985 a computer company named Symbolics registered\n symbolics.com. It is the first and longest tenured domain, although it\n changed hands in 2009.\n

$4,000

\n ICANN’s annual accreditation fee for registrars.\n

\n GoDaddy, Porkbun, Squarespace, Cloudflare, et al. pay $4,000 per year to\n ICANN. That doesn’t seem like much, and how many registrars could there\n even be, right? 3,023. There are 3,023 accredited registrars. Credit\n ~$12 million in ICANN’s annual revenue column.\n

$6,006.13

\n \n How much Google paid for google.com when they forgot to renew it.\n \n

\n In 2015, Google accidentally let google.com expire, and ex-Googler\n Sanmay Ved purchased it right there on Google Domains\n (RIP) for just $12\n at 1:20am. He owned it for all of one minute before Google reversed the\n transaction. Google paid him $6,006.13 for the ordeal because the number\n “spelled-out Google, numerically (squint a little and you’ll see it!).”\n

8.8.8.8

\n The IP address of Google’s public DNS resolver.\n

\n As review: when you plunk a domain name into your browser’s address bar,\n it goes to find the IP address behind the domain. A DNS{\" \"}\n resolver{\" \"}\n is the program that does this, like an internet phone book. Cloudflare\n has one, too, with an even cooler IP: 1.1.1.1.\n

$227,000

\n ICANN’s base application fee for the 2026 gTLD round.\n

\n Right now, until August 12, anyone can apply to create a new top-level\n domain. Corporates can apply to own their .brand, cities can apply to\n run their .geo, and registries can apply to sell .whatever to the\n general public. It’s the first chance to apply since 2012. ICANN\n facilates the process, running it on a cost recovery basis. $227,000 is\n the base fee, then there are conditional fees and ultimately auctions if\n more than one party is after the same .word. It’s an exciting year for\n domains!\n

$70,000,000

\n The sale price of ai.com.\n

\n The crypto.com founder paid $70 million for ai.com, more than double the\n previous (known) high watermark of $30 million for voice.com. He paid\n fully in crypto, of course, even bought a Superbowl ad and all.\n

$135,000,000

\n The winning bid for .web on July 27, 2016 by Verisign.\n

\n NU DOT CO LLC, secretly bidding on behalf of Verisign, won .web in an\n ICANN auction for $135 million in 2016 (part of the 2012 gTLD round).\n It’s the most any registry has paid for a gTLD in auction (that we know\n of²) and nearly $100 million more than the next highest,\n .shop for $41.5 million. But! As mentioned, this year is the first\n chance to create new gTLDs since 2012, so that record may not stand for\n long. And last week, almost 10 years to the day, Verisign announced that\n .web was finally delegated to the DNS after long legal limbo (i.e.\n disputes from other bidders).\n

401,600,000

\n \n Domain name registrations on the internet at the end of Q2 2026.\n \n

\n I wonder how long it’ll take to reach a billion—and I think we will,\n eventually—considering this number is only ~30 million more than last\n year’s. About 167 million of these are .com (still over 40% of all\n domains!), and nearly 150 million are ccTLDs. In fact, .cn (China) and\n .de (Germany) are second and third, behind only .com (albeit far behind,\n kind of a “how’s the weather up there?” situation).\n

$1,656,600,000

\n Verisign’s annual revenue in 2025.\n

\n Verisign owns .com and .net. They make over a billion and a half dollars\n every year from .com registrations alone. They’re a public\n company—Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway) bought shares starting in\n 2012. Impressively, Verisign reports 100% uptime for .com and .net over\n 28 years.\n

***

Footnotes

\n (1) I’m oversimplifying, a bit. There are root name servers, TLD name\n servers, and domain nameservers. So when you type nike.com into a\n browser (ignoring caching), your DNS query would go through a root\n nameserver, then to Verisign’s .com TLD name server, then to Nike’s name\n server, which would return the IP address for their web server.\n

\n (2) In the 2012 gTLD round there were 17 ICANN auctions and about ten\n times as many private auctions. The most notable difference was that in\n private auctions the winner paid out the losers, whereas in ICANN\n auctions the winner paid ICANN.\n

Sources

\n [$0]{\" \"}\n \n Cooperative Agreement Between NSI and U.S. Government\n ;{\" \"}\n \n Billions Registered\n \n

\n [$0.20]{\" \"}\n \n Registrar Fees\n ;{\" \"}\n \n ICANN Publishes FY25 Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements\n \n

\n [2]{\" \"}\n Root Zone Database;\n {\" \"}\n \n Taliban Shuts Down ’queer.af’ Domain, Breaking Mastodon Instance\n \n

\n [10]{\" \"}\n \n FAQs for Registrants: Domain Name Renewals and Expiration\n \n

\n [$10.26]{\" \"}\n \n Verisign Reports First Quarter 2026 Results\n ;{\" \"}\n \n Amendment 35 to Verisign’s Cooperative Agreement with the NTIA\n \n

\n [13] root-servers.org\n

\n [47%]{\" \"}\n \n .ai to generate nearly half of Anguilla’s revenue this year, tech\n minister tells BBC\n \n

\n [63]{\" \"}\n \n RFC 1035: Domain Names - Implementation and Specification\n \n

\n [277]{\" \"}\n \n Identity Digital TLD Portfolio\n ;{\" \"}\n \n Donuts raises $100 million, applies for 307 new TLDs\n \n

\n [920]{\" \"}\n \n RFC 920: Domain Requirements\n ;{\" \"}\n \n Report on Establishment of the .name Top-Level Domain\n \n

\n [1985]{\" \"}\n \n The Story of Symbolics.com: Internet History & The World’s First\n Domain Name\n \n

\n [$4,000]{\" \"}\n \n List of Accredited Registrars\n \n

\n [$6,006.13]{\" \"}\n \n Google reveals how much it paid the guy who bought Google.com for one\n minute — and it’s hysterical\n \n

\n [8.8.8.8]{\" \"}\n \n Google Public DNS\n \n

\n [$227,000]{\" \"}\n \n New gTLD Program: 2026 Round Applicant Guidebook\n \n

\n [$70,000,000]{\" \"}\n \n Crypto.com places $70M bet on AI.com domain ahead of Super Bowl\n \n

\n [$135,000,000]{\" \"}\n \n New gTLD Auction Results\n ;{\" \"}\n \n Verisign Announces Delegation of .Web\n \n

\n [401,600,000]{\" \"}\n \n The DNIB Quarterly Report Q2 2026\n \n

\n [$1,656,600,000]{\" \"}\n \n Verisign Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results\n ;{\" \"}\n \n Buffett’s Berkshire sells one-third of VeriSign stake for $1.23\n billion\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,353],"72a5479c-b999-11f0-9570-0224a6c84d84","ICANN84.tsx","3ae359c0-b999-11f0-b555-0224a6c84d84",408,["D",1762272915286],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function ICANN84() {\n return (\n

ICANN is not a boring bureaucracy

\n When you arrive in Dublin for ICANN84 and people—customs agent, hotel\n receptionist, bookstore clerk—ask what brings you to town, you tell them\n you’ve come for an “internet governance conference,” and you can almost\n hear them thinking how dull that sounds. That they’d rather go to their\n nephew’s eighth grade graduation. No follow up questions. If you tell\n them it’s{\" \"}\n \n dot com’s 40th birthday\n , that gets them thinking a bit, more interested. They know dot com!\n In fact they used dot com just this morning, or no—five minutes ago\n while waiting for the coffee to brew. But ICANN? Sounds boring.\n

\n If you’ve never heard of ICANN, you’d Google it and find that it’s the\n {\" \"}\n Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. That its\n mission is “to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global\n Internet.” If you kept poking around its website or joined one of many\n video webinars open to the public (the word webinar{\" \"}\n itself signaling boring), you’d drown in acronyms. ICANN is self-aware\n and self-deprecating about its acronym problem. The list I jotted down\n throughout the week is not nearly exhaustive, but: ICANN, IANA, DNS,\n ccTLD, gTLD, IDN, UA, WHOIS, RDAP, RDRS, RSP, RIR, GAC, GNSO, ccNSO,\n ASO, NSO, NCSG, ALAC, AGB, ASP, IRT, IRP, PDP, DASC, DNSSEC, TMCH,\n WSIS+20, …\n

I’m here to tell you that ICANN is not boring.

So what even is ICANN

ICANN makes the rules for domain names and IP addresses, mostly.

\n ICANN does not police content on the internet. Case in point: in 2022,\n Ukraine asked ICANN to shut down all Russian domains (ending in{\" \"}\n .ru). ICANN declined.\n

\n ICANN the Org and ICANN the Community{\" \"}\n are not the same, and they are often at odds. ICANN the Org, a nonprofit\n nearly 500 strong, exists to bring ICANN the Community together to agree\n on some rules. To ensure every voice is heard. Every voice{\" \"}\n means: the deeply technical ones (often but not always of the\n glasses-and-beard stereotype); domain sellers (registries/registrars);\n trademark/IP lawyers; Big Tech; governments; academics; businesses;\n human rights/privacy groups; plus end users and whoever else wants to\n participate. ICANN calls this governance model{\" \"}\n multistakeholder, which actually turns out to be an important,\n not-boring label (more on that in a moment).\n

\n ICANN the Org does not want to be at odds with the Community, but it\n literally can’t not be. Someone or another will be upset at nearly every\n turn. The goal is to make everyone the world over happy with one shared\n internet. It’s tradeoffs all the way down.\n

Privacy versus law enforcement

\n Like, there’s the privacy versus law enforcement tradeoff. In a\n nutshell, some stakeholders (read: governments) want full access to\n domain owners’ contact info and identity so that law enforcement can\n track down criminals...and maybe also surveil their citizens. Other\n stakeholders, like the NCSG (oof, another acronym: Non-Commercial\n Stakeholder Group) argue that contactability should not threaten\n anonymity. Here’s an NCSG member during Wednesday’s heated session,{\" \"}\n \n Accuracy: Can We Have Anonymity and a Secure Internet?\n {\" \"}\n (emphasis mine):\n

\n
\n Expanding the definition of accuracy beyond contactability risks\n excluding users and undermining trust, and{\" \"}\n will have severe human rights impact. There will be\n over-collection of data, and{\" \"}\n there will be surveillance and censorship risks.\n
\n

\n They cited a study on surveillance in China enabled by its cybersecurity\n law, and also the recent Discord data breach as a warning against\n identity collection. On the other side, the .uk{\" \"}\n registry’s lawyer argued that anonymity is not a human right, that\n registries are bound by their local laws, and that ID data need not be\n stored permanently (just like how each of us showed our\n government-issued ID at the ICANN84 check-in desk, as many in the room\n pointed out). In that same meeting, one law enforcement perspective:\n

\n
\n GDPR messed everything up. It was about the human right of privacy.\n So, you have to trust laws and that the companies will protect your\n data.\n
\n

\n Dozens of people joined in on the argument, which is fascinating and\n complex but beyond the scope of this email to properly cover (do watch\n the recording if you’re interested). The session wasn’t long enough, and\n the room wasn’t big enough. The last comment closed it out: “I’ve been\n in ICANN for 26 years. This topic has not gone away.”\n

\n That debate was just one of many, hidden between the color-coded\n PowerPoints throughout the week. There were plenty of grab-the-popcorn\n moments during public forums, with some comments receiving emphatic\n audience applause and one even getting a loud boo from the crowd.\n

M u l t i s t a k e h o l d e r

\n ICANN’s multistakeholder governance model{\" \"}\n is itself another boringness trap. But don’t fall in it! The whole point\n of ICANN at its inception (back in 1998) was to ensure the internet\n would be kept open and governed by the global community—not governments.\n Yes, governments participate in ICANN the Community, but they have just\n another seat at the table. Contrast this with the UN’s{\" \"}\n intergovernmental model{\" \"}\n where member states have votes. ICANN is meant to be bottom-up,\n decentralized—just like the Internet—whereas the UN is top-down,\n yay-nay-gavel.\n

\n Government as just another stakeholder wasn’t really true until 2016,\n though, when the US Commerce Department’s NTIA agency ended its contract\n with ICANN, just a few years after Snowden’s NSA leak. I’ll save that\n story for another day (eleventh hour Congressional challenge and all),\n but suffice it to say the US still has residual outsized influence over\n ICANN. For one, ICANN is a nonprofit incorporated in California. The\n Indonesian government representative asked last week what recourse is\n available if they don’t like ICANN’s decision about a new gTLD in 2026.\n Sue in California court, it seems.\n

\n How does multistakeholder work? Stakeholders, shepherded by the Org,\n work together over months and years to draft documents with input from\n far and wide. It can be painstakingly slow, which many participants were\n quick to point out (even calling it a meme). Final documents—like the\n ~400 page 2026 gTLD Applicant Guide Book, which took 6 years—are\n approved by the ICANN Board. The Board themselves are of course fallible\n humans, stakeholders with skin somewhere in the game as registry\n operators, government representatives, and what not (the Board has\n noticeable representation from the US, btw).\n

\n Over the course of an ICANN policy’s lifespan, people involved change\n jobs and move; government administrations turn over. Institutional\n knowledge is hard earned and hard to transfer. Slow as it may be, the\n global cooperation and coordination at work to keep the internet humming\n (names and numbers, anyway) is kind of amazing. Conference sessions were\n translated live in 7 languages¹. Thousands of people came to\n Dublin for ICANN84 from dozens of countries. ICANN holds three meetings\n per year, traveling all over the world to meet in person. And I realize\n now that’s really important—the face-to-face part. Some people have been\n going to these meetings since ICANN1 in Singapore. Standing ovations for\n Becky Burr and Maarten Botterman at their final Board meeting felt\n genuine. I had already accrued respect for Becky and Maarten in less\n than a week, even, just watching them operate.\n

I’m a stakeholder, oops

\n The meta result of me going to the conference is that now I feel like\n I’m part of that multistakeholder community (yawn). Technically I guess\n I was already, and so are you, as an end user. I already cared about the\n internet’s stability. I was already worried about things like\n fragmentation risk (the “Splinternet”). But now it feels more personal.\n I met a lot of friendly, interesting people last week. And as a result I\n care about them enough to want to get it right in my book, to do right\n by the people I’ve met who’ve helped me start to understand this world.\n That’s a good thing! It’ll make the book better.\n

\n I don’t mean to overstate some sappy personal angle—I mean, I just met\n these people. I’ll be an objective critic as I learn more about the Org\n and the Community. ICANN already has its critics, so I won’t be the\n first. I went to the conference to be a fly on the wall, a detached\n journalist², but I was drawn into the Community current. I\n guess that’s the multistakeholder model working?\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) But again, ICANN’s Western roots are all over the place: there are\n translations of the 2026 gTLD Applicant Guide Book, but the English\n version is the authoritative one, and applications must be in English.\n \n

\n \n (2) I don’t think of myself as a Journalist, not quite.\n “Programmer-writer” is the label I most closely identify with at the\n moment, but who cares.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,361],"25f7c858-b006-11f0-ad26-0224a6c84d84","History.tsx","7c368958-b005-11f0-8554-0224a6c84d84",393,["D",1761220090164],7,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function History() {\n return (\n

A brief history of domains

\n \n TL;DR - go scroll through{\" \"}\n \n A Brief History of Domains\n !\n \n

\n Earlier this year, dot com turned 40. Since July, when I started work on\n this book, I’ve been piecing together a timeline in my head: when DNS\n was developed, when countries got their own TLDs, when registration\n opened to the public, and dozens of other milestones.\n

\n I put that timeline on paper with some visuals and doodles marking key\n moments, like the first GoDaddy Super Bowl ad and Google Domains\n shutting down.\n

\n Unlike a printed book, I can update this timeline whenever, so reply if\n there are any milestones you think I ought to include.\n

\n \n A Brief History of Domains\n {\" \"}\n was inspired by Deno’s{\" \"}\n \n Brief History of JavaScript\n {\" \"}\n and Neal(.fun) Agarwal’s{\" \"}\n Internet Artifacts.\n

ICANN84

\n Tonight I’m boarding a red eye to Dublin for ICANN84. Let me know if\n you’ll be there—I’d love to meet up!\n

\n I’m particularly excited to listen in on discussions (and debates) on\n the 2026 gTLD round. Last time around, in 2012, many strings were\n contested, like Dodge’s application for .ram{\" \"}\n by the Indian government because of the association with the Hindu diety\n Ram. Other applications moved to “auctions of last resort” like the $135\n million Nu Dot Co (funded by Verisign) paid for{\" \"}\n .web, which is still stuck in legal challenges\n {\" \"}\n nearly a decade later.\n

\n Thanks for reading. If you like{\" \"}\n \n A Brief History of Domains\n , send it to a nerdy friend.\n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,369],"4e6bcbfc-febe-11f0-b499-42dde27851f2","Handle.tsx","7d0b1e10-febc-11f0-8068-42dde27851f2",477,["D",1769875376130],16,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Handle() {\n return (\n

Your domain is your “internet handle”

\n Your personal domain is your{\" \"}\n internet handle. Dan Abramov recently coined\n “internet handle,” where{\" \"}\n handle{\" \"}\n means your username on a website or app, like a social media platform.\n

\n Instead of being nora95 on Twitter and Instagram and{\" \"}\n heyitsnora on TikTok (nora95{\" \"}\n was taken, ugh) and yoganora{\" \"}\n on Strava, there’s a future where you can be @nora[dot]net\n {\" \"}\n everywhere.¹\n

Here’s Dan:

\n
\n Every time you sign up for a new social app, you have to rush to claim\n your username. If someone else got there first, too bad.²\n {\" \"}\n And that username only works on that one app anyway.\n
\n
This is silly. The internet has already solved this problem.
\n
\n \n There already exists a kind of handle that works anywhere on the\n internet—it’s called a domain.\n \n
\n

\n I often pitch people on buying their own domain—\n your corner of the internet\n —or even{\" \"}\n \n gifting domains to friends and family\n . Domain as internet handle might be my favorite selling point yet.\n And it’s not just about handles. It’s about not getting trapped in\n someone else’s walled garden, where the rules could change at any time.\n

Enshittification

\n Cory Doctorow’s concept of{\" \"}\n \n Enshittification\n {\" \"}\n has been making the rounds lately, and for good reason. Enshittification\n is the process whereby a social media platform:\n

\n creates something good to attract users (“share photos with your\n friends on Instagram!”)\n
\n creates something good to attract businesses (“show targeted ads to\n Instagram users”)\n
\n enshittifies{\" \"}\n the platform (let’s it decay) while extracting money from both users\n and businesses who can’t leave because they depend on it (e.g.{\" \"}\n \n 10% of Meta’s 2024 revenue came from fraudulent ads\n {\" \"}\n - that’s{\" \"}\n \n $16 billion dollars (billion!) they earned by showing users ads for\n scammy and banned products\n )\n

\n Dan also describes the problem of enshittification—though he doesn’t use\n that terminology—in his essay,{\" \"}\n Open Social:\n

\n
\n The web Alice created—who she follows, what she likes, what she has\n posted—is trapped in a box that’s owned by somebody else. To leave is\n to leave it behind.\n
\n
On an individual level, it might not be a huge deal.
\n
\n Alice can rebuild her social presence connection by connection\n somewhere else. Eventually she might even have the same reach as on\n the previous platform.\n
\n
\n However, collectively, the net effect is that social\n platforms—at first, gradually, and then suddenly—turn their backs on\n their users. If you can’t leave without losing something important,\n the platform has no incentives to respect you as a user.\n
\n
\n Maybe the app gets squeezed by investors, and every third post is an\n ad. Maybe it gets bought by a conglomerate that wanted to get rid of\n competition, and is now on life support. Maybe it runs out of funding,\n and your content goes down in two days. Maybe the founders get\n acquihired—an exciting new chapter. Maybe the app was bought by some\n guy, and now you’re slowly getting cooked by the algorithm.\n
\n

\n If TikTok shuts down tomorrow, or Twitter becomes a den of vice, you\n cannot easily port your followers (and followed/posted/liked/etc.) to\n another platform. When it looked like a TikTok rug pull was imminent\n last year, I remember talking to a music manager friend who was\n justifiably worried about his artists losing their primary marketing\n channel overnight. It’s precarious.\n

Credible exit

\n When Elon bought Twitter, Gordon Brander wrote an essay about{\" \"}\n \n credible exit\n , which means social media platforms should exist in a way that\n allows us to “credibly exit” them, taking our handle and data (posts,\n followers, likes) with us. In other words, don’t trap us. Contrast the\n walled gardens of social media—where you can’t credibly exit—with how\n email works. Per Gordon:\n

\n
\n Email offers credible exit for your social graph.\n It’s all there in your address book...so you can change between\n competing providers. You can even save your emails to your computer,\n or move them between services.\n
\n

Gordon also points to the Domain Name System as credibly exit-able:

\n
\n \n DNS offers credible exit for your domain name\n . You can move your files from one hosting provider to\n another and change the server your domain name points to. This\n prevents any one hosting provider from trapping its customers, and\n creates beneficial competition between hosting providers.\n
\n

\n A personal website or email on your own domain give you control, but\n they don’t resolve your FOMO. You still probably want to participate in\n a social network where you can interact with your friends or lurk around\n your favorite actors/athletes/politicians/horologists.\n

Open social

\n The antidote to enshittification of “closed social” platforms (a.k.a.\n “walled gardens”) is what Dan calls open social.\n

\n He makes the case for the AT protocol as “the most convincing take on\n [open social] so far.”\n

\n For the uninitiated, the “AT protocol” (or atproto,{\" \"}\n for short) is the open standard behind Bluesky. If you’d like a full\n introduction (geared toward programmers) to why we need something like\n it and how it works, I insist that you spend a half hour reading Dan’s\n {\" \"}\n Open Social.\n

\n But for the sake of this email, the tl;dr is that atproto allows you to\n take your internet handle (domain) and your data (followers, posts,\n etc.) with you from platform to platform. So if you hang around Bluesky\n for a while and decide to leave—because they run out of money, run too\n many ads, whatever—you can bring your handle and your data with you to\n the next place you and your friends decide to hang out.\n

\n The AT protocol may be the most promising realization yet of domains as\n internet handles, but it doesn’t have to be atproto. I think domains as\n internet handles will happen regardless of which open standards and apps\n we adopt. If from the start Gmail had sold custom domains for email\n addresses rather than assigning @gmail[dot]com{\" \"}\n ones, we might already be living in that world.\n

\n \n Btw, while some of what I’m writing about here is jargon-y, internet\n handle adoption won’t require technical savvy. There are neat projects\n like Domain Connect{\" \"}\n (another open standard!) that make setting up a domain{\" \"}\n \n one-click easy\n .\n \n

You only have one phone number

\n Owning your domain is like owning your phone number. When you switch\n carriers, you keep your handle (phone number) and your data (contacts,\n messages, etc). Your friends and family can still reach you. They don’t\n even know that you’ve switched. They don’t care.\n

\n Likewise, for your nora[dot]net website and your{\" \"}\n n@nora[dot]net{\" \"}\n email address, you can switch hosting providers without ostensibly\n changing anything, as far as the outside world is concerned. Or as Dan\n says, “you’re not a hostage to your hosting” (point Abramov for\n wordplay).\n

\n When I was in 7th grade, my Dad took me to the Verizon store to get my\n first cellphone—a Sony Ericsson W350i, which for some reason came\n pre-loaded with Fire Burning{\" \"}\n by Sean Kingston as my custom ringtone. When it came time to assign me a\n phone number, the store clerk said he’d “find me a good one” and spent a\n minute or two spinning his mouse wheel. He found a number with five 5s,\n and to this day when I spell out my phone number people will say,\n “that’s a lotta fives.”³{\" \"}\n I’ve switched from Verizon to AT&T to T-Mobile and back to Verizon\n over the years, and I’ve always taken for granted that my phone number\n moves with me. I call and text as before, and the callers and texters on\n the other end are none the wiser.\n

\n Unlike your phone number, your choice of internet handle is not in the\n hands of the Verizon store clerk. You can be @pablo.earth\n {\" \"}\n or @amy.art or @lucy.food or{\" \"}\n something else entirely.\n

\n From the internet,
-@petemillspaugh.com\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Surely there exists an actual{\" \"}\n nora95, but I pulled this example out of the random name\n generator in my brain. So if you’re reading this, Nora, well, what a\n small world.\n \n

\n \n (2) My footnote, not Dan’s: Not only is the gold rush for new handles\n silly, it also gets financialized (unsurprisingly). Just like there is\n Serious Money in the{\" \"}\n \n secondary market for domains\n , there are also secondary markets for Twitter/Instagram/etc\n handles and even vanity phone numbers (like 1-800-GOT-JUNK). Twitter\n under Elon brought that market in-house,{\" \"}\n \n selling inactive handles\n {\" \"}\n for thousands to millions of dollars per handle.\n \n

\n \n (3) It happened just this week at the front desk before a yoga class.\n I feel a small sense of arbitrary pride when someone points it out,\n like I’ve just been personally complimented.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,378],"b28b1c80-93f9-11f0-a531-0224a6c84d84","Googol.tsx","6d16e3c6-93f6-11f0-82a7-0224a6c84d84",303,["D",1758136110001],13,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Googol() {\n return (\n

googol dot com

\n I am working from the Google office in NYC¹, and after my\n third trip to the cafeteria (there are four in this building) for free\n matcha, sushi, and anything else I could want to eat or drink, I decided\n now is as good a time as any to write about Google’s fingerprints on the\n secret life of domains. While writing this, I realized that it actually\n might be a better time than just any because Larry and Sergey registered\n google.com exactly 28 years ago today (I started drafting this on\n Monday): September 15, 1997.\n

\n Also today: GOOG stock hits all-time high $3 trillion.\n

\n Google is relevant to the domain world in many ways: as a (former)\n registrar, as a registry, as a way for domain investors to monetize\n parked domains, for its crackdown on{\" \"}\n domain tasting and\n {\" \"}\n kiting, and on and on.\n There’s even a good story behind the “front door of the internet,”\n Google’s apex domain google dot com.\n

Idk, Googol it

\n googol dot com is not a misspelling. google dot com\n {\" \"}\n itself is the misspelling{\" \"}\n \n according to David Koller\n {\" \"}\n who was in the room where it happened (or at least nearby).\n

\n
\n Sean and Larry were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to\n think up a good name - something that related to the indexing of an\n immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word “googolplex,”\n and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, “googol” (both\n words refer to specific large numbers). Sean was seated at his\n computer terminal, so he executed a search of the Internet domain name\n registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still\n available for registration and use. Sean is not an infallible speller,\n and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as\n “google.com,” which he found to be available. Larry liked the name,\n and within hours he took the step of registering the name “google.com”\n for himself and Sergey.\n
\n

\n So Google is nerdily named after its homophone,{\" \"}\n googol, which represents ten to the power of one hundred^{\n 2\n}. Google also uses the scientific notationally named{\" \"}\n 1e100.net domain to identify its servers’ IP addresses.\n

\n In 2015, Google accidentally let google dot com{\" \"}\n expire, and ex-Googler Sanmay Ved{\" \"}\n \n purchased it\n {\" \"}\n right there on Google Domains for just $12 at 1:20am (really conjuring\n the hooded hacker image in the middle of the night). He owned it for all\n of one minute before Google reversed the transaction. Google{\" \"}\n \n paid him\n {\" \"}\n $6,006.13 for the ordeal because the number “spelled-out Google,\n numerically (squint a little and you’ll see it!).“\n

\n
\n Google Security has now contacted me, and has offered me a $x reward\n in a very Googley way. -Sanmay\n
\n

\n Sanmay is back working at Google again, and for security reasons neither\n side ever revealed how the lapse happened.\n

\n For a moment, it was possible to literally buy google dot com on google\n dot com, but nowadays it’s no longer possible to buy any{\" \"}\n domain from Google.\n

The registrar formerly known as Google Domains

\n Google comes up again and again in my interviews, and it’s most often\n about the head-scratching sale of Google Domains to Squarespace two\n years ago. One programmer friend said:\n

\n
\n I liked it when Google got into the game, because of the high trust /\n their excellent security... but then I think they gave up that\n business? Classic fucking Google\n
\n

\n Google has become notorious for{\" \"}\n killing{\" \"}\n popular products, and Google Domains was quite popular. It launched in\n 2015, and it was the{\" \"}\n \n third most popular registrar\n {\" \"}\n by the time it shut down in 2023 (10 million domains registered as of\n June 2023). I held all my domains there, and once they moved to\n Squarespace I transferred to Cloudflare.\n

\n As I’ve written about before, registrars face thin margins whereas{\" \"}\n \n registries can basically print money\n . So running a registrar is not a no-brainer for direct\n {\" \"}\n profit, but its indirect{\" \"}\n impact does seem valuable. A Hacker News commenter said that a\n registrar’s business is like the hot dogs at Costco.\n

\n For starters, any product with millions of users feels like something\n you’d hold onto. But for Google specifically, you’d think Domains would\n be valuable for upsell/cross-sell potential to adjacent products like\n Google Workspace (for a nice custom domain email). Google wants\n developers in its ecosystem, and developers love buying domains^{\n 3\n}. If you buy a domain at Google, maybe you’d also host your\n website or database there, integrate with Gemini, etc.\n

\n Many registrars do follow this strategy. My two favored registrars at\n the moment,{\" \"}\n Cloudflare\n {\" \"}\n and{\" \"}\n Vercel, both sell domains at\n cost (i.e., no markup above the wholesale registry price plus the ICANN\n fee). Vercel used to mark up domains, but now they’re at cost. A friend\n who works on domains at Vercel told me the math is clear: customers who\n buy domains there have a high lifetime value—they host on Vercel, they\n convert to Pro plans, etc. It makes sense. I create my Next.js site and\n host it on Vercel, they handle my DNS, so why not store my domains there\n too? It can also be a source of goodwill because many other registrars\n have bad UX and/or a bad reputation for sketchy behavior, like buying\n domains you’ve queried before you can.\n

\n I also think losing G Domains could be a fumble for Google in the vibe\n coding era. If an order of magnitude more people start hacking together\n apps on Gemini (or other LLM app builders like repl.it, v0.dev,\n lovable.dev, bolt.new, val.town—hey, all good non-dot-com TLDs!) then it\n would pretty handy for Google to say,{\" \"}\n do you want a domain for your cool new app?{\" \"}\n Regardless of where someone prefers to (vibe) code, registrars can meet\n people where they are (e.g., by selling domains through an API or MCP\n server). That’s not wholly a new idea—Squarespace is a website builder\n after all—but it might be a bigger opportunity now.\n

\n On the other hand, my Googler friend who I’m working with today pointed\n out that maybe Google decided the antitrust risks outweighed the\n economic and brand benefits. There are several{\" \"}\n \n Hacker News threads\n {\" \"}\n raising theories on why they sold: that it wasn’t worth the thin\n margins; that customer support was a major burden; that dealing with\n registrars and ICANN was actually a lot of work; that it was just a\n product focus thing (no wonder the Google graveyard is so big—they try\n everything); that they bartered Google Domains away to win Squarespace\n as a big Google Cloud customer and G Workspace partner; that there was\n potential friction with Google Registry; etc.\n

\n The obvious comparison is Amazon. They also have a registrar, Route 53,\n although it’s buried pretty deep in AWS (which could be a feature not a\n bug if customer support burden really is the tradeoff). It’s interesting\n to pit Amazon’s domain positioning against that of Google because, like\n Google, Amazon also has a registry, and the two often cross paths.\n

Charleston Road Registry

\n Google’s registry is incorporated as Charleston Road Registry Inc., as\n in the road that cuts through their Bay Area campus in Mountain View.\n

\n Google owns the rights to 46 top-level domains, like{\" \"}\n .dev, which they sell wholesale to registrars who in turn\n sell them to end customers. By comparison, Amazon owns 53 TLDs, and\n other registries you’ve never heard of own even more (like{\" \"}\n Identity Digital, formerly\n named Donuts and listed in the root zone database as Binky Moon, LLC).\n Registries pay Serious Money for some TLDs, like the $25 million Google\n paid for .app when it was auctioned in 2015. Google has\n {\" \"}\n applied for{\" \"}\n 101 TLDs total, so they’ve won about half of all applications/auctions.\n In alphabetical order, they own:\n

\n
\n .ads, .android, .app, .boo, .cal, .channel, .chrome, .dad, .day,\n .dclk, .dev, .docs, .drive, .eat, .esq, .fly, .foo, .gbiz, .gle,\n .gmail, .goog, .google, .guge, .hangout, .here, .how, .ing, .map,\n .meet, .meme, .mov, .new, .nexus, .page, .phd, .play, .prod, .prof,\n .rsvp, .search, .soy, .谷歌, .みんな, .グーグル, .youtube, .zip\n
\n

\n Of these, .dev{\" \"}\n is the one I see most often in the wild, and Amazon was the only other\n applicant before they withdrew. While no deals have been publicly\n disclosed, it sounds like Google and Amazon have made some backroom\n handshake deals to trade TLDs. Around the same time, Google won{\" \"}\n .drive while Amazon won .you and{\" \"}\n .talk.\n

\n About a third of these Google TLDs are tied to its products, like{\" \"}\n .gmail and{\" \"}\n .youtube. Others are kind of odd or funny, like,{\" \"}\n .dad? Google acquired .dad{\" \"}\n “to create a premiere online destination where registrants can offer and\n users can gain access to ideas, products, services and information about\n fathers and fatherhood,” but they lost out on .mom{\" \"}\n (which does exist and is owned by the{\" \"}\n \n .xyz registry\n ). Delegation of .zip triggered widespread{\" \"}\n \n security fears\n {\" \"}\n tied to potential confusion over the same-named file extension.\n

\n Each TLD (not just those owned by Google) has its own ICANN wiki page\n (e.g.,{\" \"}\n icannwiki.org/.zip), and many\n have their own regular Wikipedia page (e.g.,{\" \"}\n \n for .zip\n ). When you see a new TLD in the wild, look it up on ICANN Wiki and\n tell me about it!\n

\n As with so many domain subtopics, you could probably write an entire\n book on Google’s domain influence and involvement alone. I have to end\n these emails somewhere, though, so I’ll save Google’s role in domain\n investing (e.g., parked domains farming pennies with Google ads) among\n other topics for another day. I’ve yet to listen to part two of the{\" \"}\n Acquired{\" \"}\n podcast on Google, but I’m sure that’ll turn up even more angles to\n research. Reply with your thoughts on the lingering question:{\" \"}\n \n Why did Google really sell Google Domains, and was it a mistake?\n \n

Thanks for reading.

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Google has several offices in New York. This one is at St. John’s\n Terminal all the way west on Houston St., in the area being heavily\n rebranded as Hudson Square. I’m writing from the Greenhouse room,\n around the corner from the ROYGBIV room, and the whole building is a\n greenhouse, really. There are trees all over the north-facing\n entrance, planted on concrete cantilevers sticking out of the\n all-glass facade.\n \n

\n \n (2) When numbers get big enough they get special names, apparently.\n Googol even has alternate names like ten duotrigintillian and ten\n sexdecilliard that follow logical scale nomenclatures and, while long,\n are quite a bit shorter than writing\n 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.\n \n

\n \n (3) I own a couple dozen, many of which I’ve bought for friends and\n family as birthday or holiday gifts. Ok, you say, but you’re writing a\n book about domains. Yes, that’s fair, but I was catching up with some\n former coworkers last night, and one friend said he owns ~200! I’d say\n the median number of domains owned by most dev-friends I talk to is\n about 10 (then again, I probably tend to ask more side\n project-oriented programmers than this-is-just-my-job software\n engineers).\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,387],"5bae15ae-7476-11f0-b304-0224a6c84d84","Gold.tsx","ee941b62-7470-11f0-bb40-0224a6c84d84",193,["D",1754671214145],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Gold() {\n return (\n

\n In 1994, Gary Kremen registered sex dot com for $0, and in 2006 he sold\n it for over $12 million¹.\n

\n But it wasn't just NSFW domains that became gold out of thin air.\n Hundreds of early domain investors (a.k.a.{\" \"}\n domainers) registered dot coms for tens or hundreds of\n dollars—and in many cases for free—then flipped those domains for five,\n six, seven, and even eight figures.\n

\n Last week I read David Kesmodel's book about domain investing,{\" \"}\n \n The Domain Game: How People Get Rich From Internet Domain Names\n . It was published in 2008, and I bet many people who read it\n around then would have said the domain gold rush was already over. One\n book reviewer on Goodreads wrote, \"this book made clear to me that the\n domain game is pretty much over.\" From the book:\n

\n
\n Each of the 676 possible two-letter combinations and each of the\n 17,576 possible three-letter combinations was taken by March\n 2006...Each of the one thousand most common English words was\n registered.\n
\n

\n I wrote last week that{\" \"}\n \n the .com{\" \"}\n domain is already taken for all 2,315 words in the original Wordle\n answer key\n . And that includes some pretty bad domains, like wooer dot com (on\n sale for $30k if you want it). Solo domain investors bought all these\n \"good\" domains starting in the 90s, and sophisticated institutional\n investors spent hundreds of millions in the early- to mid-2000s on\n domain portfolios.\n

\n So it's too late. It's a common feeling—that you've arrived too late.\n Marc Andreessen talked about arriving to Silicon Valley in the 90s and\n feeling like he'd missed it because the PC revolution had already\n happened (...but the Web was just getting started, of course).\n

\n Ok, those two- and three-letter combos and the top thousand common\n English words were all taken by 2006...for{\" \"}\n .com. But now there are hundreds of other top-level domains\n (TLDs). You can buy hat.world{\" \"}\n for $200 right now, for example—no one has registered it yet.^{\n 2\n}{\" \"}\n So maybe it isn't too late.\n

\n The real estate metaphor is useful, I think. Investing in New York City\n real estate in the year 1990 would have already been both competitive\n and expensive. Over seven million people lived in NYC at the time, but\n less than a million lived in Shenzhen, China. Now Shenzhen has a\n population approaching 20 million, and its real estate market is\n commensurately expensive (broadly speaking—I don't know much about real\n estate). Maybe NYC is the .com here and Shenzhen is{\" \"}\n .ai{\" \"}\n (the second hottest TLD this year, according to reported secondary\n market domain sales).\n

\n Real estate isn't a perfect metaphor, of course. It starts to fray when\n comparing the finite land in the world with the near infinite set of\n possible domains. Introducing new vanity TLDs like .land\n {\" \"}\n and .xyz{\" \"}\n affects the value of existing assets, like dot coms. Would you pay $75k\n for bananabread dot com when you could buy{\" \"}\n bananabread.shop for $550 or{\" \"}\n bananabread.kitchen for $10?³\n

\n It's tricky trying to make sense of a (relatively) new asset class.\n Emerging investment opportunities often resemble predecessors, but\n there's danger in overfitting old mental models and strategies. Like,\n just look how controversial cryptocurrency has been over the last\n decade. I'm more or less a novice when it comes to investing, but it's\n way too important to the story of domains to ignore. I've never been a\n professional investor, but some of you reading this have or are. Reply!\n I'm excited to learn about this world and make sense of it all.\n

\n In my research and in the book I'll explore where domain investing is\n now as an industry and asset class. I'll cover its (sometimes shady)\n history, like registrars getting high on their own supply (i.e. buying\n domains before the customers they serve can buy them). I'll experiment\n as a domainer myself, building my own small portfolio and publicizing my\n rationale and results. I'll talk to investors, registrars, registries,\n and journalists in the domaining world. To that end, reach out if you\n have stories to share, questions you want me to pursue, or people I\n should interview (including you).\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Btw, no need to follow your curiosity to the browser— sex dot com\n is exactly what you think it is. I'll cover the NSFW underbelly of the\n domain world (porn) in the book. It's not something domain investors\n necessarily want to associate with or talk about, but it has been too\n lucrative to ignore.\n \n

\n \n (2) If you're wondering why $200 and not $10, it's because{\" \"}\n .world{\" \"}\n is a \"premium\" top-level domain (TLD). Domain registries (different\n from registrars) bid for TLD rights in auctions and can then charge\n what they want in turn. A company called Donuts raised over $100\n million to buy the rights to .world{\" \"}\n and many, many more TLDs, like{\" \"}\n .email. I'll cover how TLDs work in the book.\n \n

\n (3) Those are all real asking prices as of today, August 8th.\n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,396],"81627a88-0b7f-11f1-8c14-42dde27851f2","EmmaStone.tsx","97e54d2c-0b7e-11f1-a17a-42dde27851f2",501,["D",1771277768449],6,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function EmmaStone() {\n return (\n

Emma Stone still doesn’t really own her domain

\n Squarespace ran a{\" \"}\n Super Bowl ad\n {\" \"}\n wherein Emma Stone lives on a solo Shutter Island/Alcatraz¹\n {\" \"}\n continually searching emmastone[dot]com{\" \"}\n and shattering computer after computer when (re)discovering that her\n personal domain is: Unavailable.\n

\n The ad is different from most Super Bowl domain ads past because it’s\n about a personal{\" \"}\n domain—not a small business nor corporate domains. Squarespace spent $8\n million in 30 seconds, and at $14-20 per dot com, it could take years to\n get that back in personal domain sales alone.\n

\n Squarespace set up a minisite on{\" \"}\n emmastone.com{\" \"}\n to anticipate all the Big Game viewers who’d naturally wonder what’s\n actually on Emma Stone’s website. Although it’s not really Emma Stone’s\n website. It belongs to Squarespace, or at least she’s agreed to let them\n use it to sell domains. Emma Stone said herself the “commercial is based\n on true events,” which{\" \"}\n \n apparently\n {\" \"}\n included buying the domain from the original owner who’d registered it\n for their niece in 2001.\n

\n The minisite’s tagline reads, “Get your domain before you lose it.” Emma\n Stone’s domain remorse becomes your domain FOMO. Other than that, it’s\n just a domain search box and a{\" \"}\n \n 90-second pitch\n {\" \"}\n from Emma Stone.\n

\n
\n That is why I have now registered emmastone[dot]com, emmastone.news,\n emmastone.world, emmastone.condos, emmastone.life, emmastone.cool. And\n many, many more.\n
\n

\n Not only is Squarespace pushing personal domains—they’re also pitching\n gTLDs. And again, none of those are actually Stone’s—they all redirect\n to the same Squarespace minisite. The gTLD nudge didn’t make the cut for\n the 30-second spot, but I wonder if it has any portent on Squarespace’s\n plans for the 2026 gTLD round (the first wave of new domain extensions\n since 2012). Squarespace does not presently run a registry—only the{\" \"}\n registrar, which got 10x bigger after Squarespace{\" \"}\n \n acquired Google Domains\n {\" \"}\n a few years ago—but they could become a registry in the 2026 round.\n Applications open by April 30th, and Reveal Day (when we all find out\n who applied for what) will be ~August 12th.\n

\n GoDaddy has been running Super Bowl ads since 2005, most of which don’t\n talk about domains at all. Like car insurance, domain registrars are a\n commoditized, thin-to-no-margin business. So like car insurance football\n ads (think: Geico, Allstate, Progressive, State Farm), GoDaddy\n ostensibly gave up on differentiating its product—or never tried—and\n instead opted for celebrities and shock value.\n

\n I don’t mind Squarespace spreading domain FOMO, and it was fun to see\n the commercial and get “did you see the domains ad?” texts from friends\n and family. I’m on board with everyone owning their personal domain,\n although probably for{\" \"}\n different\n {\" \"}\n reasons, and\n from any at-cost registrar—Cloudflare, Porkbun, Vercel, et al.\n

Footnotes

\n (1) I don’t know if that’s what they were going for, but the commercial\n was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos who also directed Stone in{\" \"}\n Poor Things, which I have not seen! The{\" \"}\n \n press release\n {\" \"}\n includes a quote from Stone that the ad was filmed in her own home,\n apparently.\n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,404],"631bdea0-2c7e-11f1-8ebd-42dde27851f2","DotOrg.tsx","0e4d25b4-2c7e-11f1-9267-42dde27851f2",551,["D",1774905676534],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function DotMeow() {\n return (\n

Dot org is not not for profit

\n There is no restriction on who can register a .org{\" \"}\n domain. Capital G Good organizations, capital B Bad organizations, and\n everyone in between are welcome to have .org websites.\n

\n So we end up with everything from the Internet Archive at{\" \"}\n archive.org, to Facebook’s{\" \"}\n Internet.org\n {\" \"}\n digital colonialism¹, to whatever{\" \"}\n non-prophet.org{\" \"}\n is—all signaling, or hiding, behind a dot org facade.\n

\n When domain registration first opened to the public in 1993,{\" \"}\n .org was reserved for nonprofit organizations. Likewise,\n {\" \"}\n .com was for commercial businesses and{\" \"}\n .net was for Internet{\" \"}\n infrastructure companies. But when demand for domains quickly\n overwhelmed the administrative capacity of Network Solutions (the first\n registrar), they stopped bothering to enforce the extension semantics.\n (Although .edu, .gov, and .mil\n {\" \"}\n from that first batch of TLDs are still restricted.)\n

\n So any company branding itself with a .org{\" \"}\n can profit as they wish, but what about the registry that sells and\n maintains those .org domains?\n

\n Wholesale\n {\" \"}\n prices for .org domains{\" \"}\n \n will increase\n {\" \"}\n from $9.93 to $11.00 on June 1 of this year—the first increase since\n 2016². Small potatoes, maybe, but reading about this pulled\n me down the .org{\" \"}\n rabbit hole wherein: dot org was nearly sold to a private equity buyer\n in 2019 until the California attorney general questioned the deal,\n preventing likely approval by ICANN,{\" \"}\n \n the governance body meant to exist outside of government control\n (read: outside US control).\n \n

Before elaborating on dot org’s history, here’s the gist:

\n .org was supposed to be for nonprofits...\n
\n ...but soon anyone could have a .org website.\n
\n In 2019 .org sold to private equity.\n
\n They probably would’ve charged more for .org domains.\n
ICANN said, “looks good to me.”
The U.S. legal system said, “not so fast.”

\n The crux of the dot org drama started in 2019. The .org\n {\" \"}\n TLD is owned and run by the Public Interest Registry\n (“PIR”, commonly), a 501(c)(3) formed in\n 2002 with a stated mission to support the free and open Internet. It’s\n right there in the name: they ostensibly serve the “public interest.”\n Before that, Verisign owned and operated .org along with\n {\" \"}\n .com and .net{\" \"}\n (which together pull in over $1.5 billion each year).\n

\n In 2019, PIR and ICANN agreed to a new Registry Agreement (the contract\n that says how much they’re allowed to charge for domains) that{\" \"}\n \n removed price caps\n {\" \"}\n on .org{\" \"}\n domains. Before that, PIR was allowed to raise prices 10% per year. They\n hadn’t raised prices since 2016, though, so nbd?\n

\n Andrew Allemann foreshadowed why it would be a Big Deal in{\" \"}\n \n two\n {\" \"}\n \n articles\n {\" \"}\n about the price cap removal.\n

\n
\n The good news is that Public Interest Registry’s management is\n competent and well-guided...But management changes. Boards change. And\n one day, it could get ugly.\n
\n

\n
\n And if one of these registries decides to sell itself to a private\n equity group or another company? All bets are off.\n
\n

\n Just a few months later, PIR announced a sale to private equity buyer\n Ethos Capital for over a billion dollars. And Ethos’s leadership\n included the ex-CEO of ICANN Fadi Chehadé. It smelled very much like\n regulatory capture. Only six of 3,000 public comments during ICANN’s\n open comment period were in favor of removing price caps. And that was\n {\" \"}\n before{\" \"}\n the sale was announced. “The comment period was a farce,” as Andrew\n said.\n

\n The comments on Andrew’s article—which, again, was before the private\n equity news broke—were colorful to say the least:\n

\n
\n this is a f**** disgrace. can’t believe the shenanigans. icann is now\n just a joke\n
\n

\n
---
\n

\n
Public Interest Registry MY ARSE!
\n

\n
---
\n

\n
Why do they bother taking comments? They are always ignored.
\n

\n
---
\n

\n
Way to go ICANN! Dictatorship at it’s finest!
\n

\n Like any semi-anonymous internet forum, there were some real\n grab-the-popcorn arguments. Kevin Murphy called the regulatory capture\n argument “flimsy,” to which an anonymous “John” replied:\n

\n
\n Spoken like the tool of establishment, oligarchy and plutocracy I have\n always considered you to be.\n
\n

To which Kevin replied:

\n
\n Spoken like an anonymous coward, as I have always considered you to\n be.\n
\n

\n Kevin’s own article on{\" \"}\n \n ICANN’s explanation\n {\" \"}\n pointed to ICANN itself—not PIR nor other registries—pushing for the\n change to remove price caps. He suggested that ICANN wanted “to make its\n life easier and stay out of price regulation.” It also sounds like ICANN\n wanted a level playing field for .org{\" \"}\n and the new (2012) gTLDs, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since\n {\" \"}\n .org{\" \"}\n had first mover advantage and a captive audience of registrants (because\n domain switching costs are so high). Some commentary suggested that\n Verisign had the most to gain from the removal of .org{\" \"}\n price caps, which I’m guessing has to do with that decision’s portent on\n {\" \"}\n .com price caps.\n

\n Concerns about private equity taking over and squeezing profits out of\n {\" \"}\n .org{\" \"}\n never had the chance to materialize, though, once the California\n attorney general stepped in.\n

\n Even though ICANN has a{\" \"}\n \n multistakeholder governance model\n {\" \"}\n where governments are supposed to be just another stakeholder, it is\n still a nonprofit under California jurisdiction. ICANN has been trying\n to unwind outsize US control and influence for years, but its California\n nonprofit status is a major concrete roadblock. (There are other, less\n concrete roadblocks like the disproportionate number of Board members\n either from the US or working for US-based organizations.)\n

\n So in 2020, when it looked like ICANN would approve PIR’s sale to\n private equity, California AG Xavier Becerra notified ICANN its board\n that it should reject the takeover.\n

\n
ICANN must exercise its authority to withhold approval.
\n

\n ICANN ended up rejecting the deal to prioritize “public interest” over\n “the interests of [Ethos’s] corporate stakeholders,” but it’s hard to\n argue that it wasn’t a direct result of Becerra’s challenge.\n

\n Even many opponents of the deal worried that it set a dangerous\n precedent for the US meddling in ICANN governance. Geopolitical conflict\n is unavoidable when making the rules for Internet domains (e.g. in\n February 2022, Ukraine asked ICANN to shut down Russian domains .ru and\n .рф, and ICANN declined). I have a lot more to learn and unpack as I\n continue to research and write the book.\n

\n It’s odd that so much drama led to so little concrete change in this\n case. As Andrew pointed out, $11.00 today is equivalent to about $8.50\n in 2016, so June’s price increase seems completely reasonable at face\n value. Had PIR or Ethos raised prices just 10% per year since 2016 we’d\n already be passing $20.\n

\n But even without much tangible change in who runs .org{\" \"}\n or how much they charge, its history colors the picture of domain\n governance friction between ICANN and the U.S. government and the\n broader question of how financialized domains and the Internet should\n be.\n

\n As a caveat and a call for replies: I wasn’t paying attention when the\n dot org sale happened then didn’t in 2019, and I certainly wasn’t around\n when PIR was formed in 2002. I know these things are complex and that\n I’ve only scratched the surface here. To that end, I want to get it\n right in my book, so if you have thoughts and/or personal experience to\n share, please do reply.\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Internet.org was broadly criticized as Facebook’s veiled{\" \"}\n \n digital colonialism\n . It was{\" \"}\n \n not neutral, not secure, and not the Internet\n .\n \n

\n \n (2) You can register a domain for up to 10 years, so before June any\n {\" \"}\n .org{\" \"}\n registrants can lock in the $9.93 renewal price through 2036. Without\n any new registrations nor expirations, the 11.5m currently registered\n {\" \"}\n .org{\" \"}\n domains would generate between ~$114m and ~126m in revenue. An{\" \"}\n \n estimated\n {\" \"}\n ~77% of registrants renewed last quarter.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,413],"776cbfa4-29f0-11f1-b20b-42dde27851f2","DotMeow.tsx","fc6a88c4-29ed-11f1-93ba-42dde27851f2",537,["D",1774624819745],12,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function DotMeow() {\n return (\n

dot meow: the next queer corner of the Internet

\n ⟡⟡⟡ Like selling Subarus to lesbians ⟡⟡⟡\n

\n The Internet loves cats. Loves{\" \"}\n them. So much so that a Belgian nonprofit called the{\" \"}\n dotMeow Foundation{\" \"}\n raised well over $100k from nearly 2,000 people in a{\" \"}\n \n Kickstarter campaign\n {\" \"}\n to own and run a queer, cat corner¹ of the Internet:{\" \"}\n \n .meow\n \n

\n
\n We’re applying to ICANN to operate .meow - we want to create a\n top-level domain where 100% of our profits fund LGBTQIA+ community\n infrastructure.\n
\n

\n Soon, if all goes according to plan, you’ll be able to register domains\n like right.meow or{\" \"}\n thecats.meow. And the internet will be a little sillier, or\n in their words: “weird, fun, cats—not as...commercial.” But the\n commercial side of this is interesting, too. What does it even mean to\n {\" \"}\n own .meow?\n

\n Right meow there are{\" \"}\n \n 1,592 top-level domains\n , or TLDs—the part to the right of the dot—like{\" \"}\n .com or{\" \"}\n .org. Over a thousand of those came from an open round in\n 2012 where any organization could apply and bid for{\" \"}\n .whatever. That’s when Google paid $25 million for{\" \"}\n .app and when .blog, .sex,{\" \"}\n .baby, and hundreds of other extensions came to be. This\n year, 2026, is the first time since 2012 that companies can again apply\n to own a piece of the Internet’s domain namespace.\n

The dotMeow Foundation’s application is novel in a few ways:

\n Their word choice is an oblique nod to their community, unlike the\n overt .gay and .lgbt\n
\n They crowdfunded the application fee (and then some) and intend to run\n {\" \"}\n .meow forever\n
\n They publicly announced the word they’re applying for, inviting or\n discouraging competition\n

\n It costs $227k to even apply for a TLD, but there is financial aid\n available, which dotMeow has already been approved for, so they’ll pay\n more like ~$50k in base costs². If it works out, they plan to\n charge around $22-32 per year to register .meow{\" \"}\n domains, so they should make back their initial investment with a few\n thousand registrations. And who will those registrants be?\n

Selling Subarus to lesbians

\n Just like anyone can buy a Subaru, anyone will be able to buy a{\" \"}\n .meow domain.\n

\n
\n We’re applying for a gTLD with open registration, meaning that anyone\n can register a .meow domain and do with it what they wish (within\n legal limits, of course).\n
\n

\n The idea is not that all .meow{\" \"}\n domains will be for overtly queer things—although plenty of them\n will—but that the profits will fund queer things, through grants and\n what not. That said, an expressive domain can be used for signaling. By\n making a home on{\" \"}\n marshall.meow, for example, Marshall might be signaling\n that they are a member or ally of the LGBTQIA+ community. Meow is not\n universal slang for gay, obviously, so it’ll be more of an insiders’\n nod, like when\n “\n Subaru spent more than a decade carefully targeting lesbian consumers\n ” in the 90s and 2000s.\n

\n
\n And while .gay can feel loud or limiting, .meow is playful and\n versatile — a subtle signal of solidarity, a wink to those in the\n know. We want it to become shorthand for “this person or org has our\n backs.”\n
\n

\n .gay and .lgbt do exist already, btw:{\" \"}\n .lgbt{\" \"}\n is owned and run (100% for profit) by Identity Digital, the largest\n registry in the world with nearly 300 top-level domains, and{\" \"}\n .gay{\" \"}\n was originally owned and run (80% for profit) by Top Level Design (the\n registry side of Porkbun) and later sold to GoDaddy’s registry arm. Both\n came out in the 2012 round.\n

\n
\n Where .gay donates 20% of proceeds to two large charities, .meow is\n structured so that every cent beyond operating costs goes back to\n queer communities.\n
\n

\n And again, the Web is obsessed with cats, so the Internet cat machine\n could plausibly funnel substantial money into queer causes.\n

\n
\n We chose .meow because it has a broad appeal. A tech company can\n register a .meow domain. A gaming community can. An artist can. We\n want to bring new money into queer mutual aid, not just redistribute\n existing resources. Every registration — whether it’s from someone\n building a personal site or a business establishing their online\n presence — will feed back into LGBTQIA+ community infrastructure.\n
\n

\n .cat is a TLD, too—a longstanding one not for house{\" \"}\n cats but rather for{\" \"}\n Catalonia. Its registration is restricted to people\n demonstrating use or promotion of the Catalan language and culture.\n

Not for profit

\n This next line from dotMeow’s kickstarter may sound like corporatest\n (nonprofitese?), but it’s not to be taken for granted.\n

\n
\n We have big dreams for what we will be able to achieve in the long\n term. We intend for this to be the project of our lifetimes.\n
\n

\n So this is—supposed to be, at least—a lifetime investment, unlike\n registries who talk about “exiting” a TLD. That is, some registries talk\n about spending millions to bid for a TLD and run it, say, for a decade,\n before selling the “portfolio” to another registry.\n

\n
\n We’re not a tech start-up looking for an exit. We’re not a corporation\n looking for profit margins. We’re a mission-driven organisation intent\n on building infrastructure that takes care of its own community.\n
\n

\n As a registrant, a Joe Schmoe or a Pete or an Emilia, we can only ever\n renew a domain for 10 years maximum. It's the asterisk on “owning” your\n domain, because at the end of the day you are still beholden to and\n trusting the registry (safer than trusting a walled garden social media\n platform for your web presence, but still not 100% in your control). I\n can't be sure that Radix will still operate this .press\n {\" \"}\n domain a decade from now or whether they will have “exited” by selling\n the porfolio to another registry who'll hike up prices or neglect\n stability (but in fairness, that buyer could be an even more trustworthy\n steward). So I think it means something that dotMeow is at least\n pledging to run .meow{\" \"}\n forever. If their application succeeds...\n

Game theory

\n I gather that it’s unusual for a registry to announce application plans\n ahead of time. I could see it either inviting competition (“hm .meow,\n not a bad idea—the internet loves cats”) or discouraging it (“eh, let’s\n not bother with the hassle of contention for that one”). The\n pre-announcement also gets the wheels turning for registrations down the\n line.\n

\n
\n We’re confident there’s demand, it is part of why we’re running this\n Kickstarter is so we can demonstrate that interest already exists to\n potential registrar partners.\n
\n

\n .meow{\" \"}\n is a “Community” gTLD in ICANN jargon, meaning it’s supposed to be\n “operated for the benefit of a clearly delineated community.” That means\n if other businesses apply for the string, dotMeow can move to the front\n of the line with a “Community Priority Evaluation” (which costs another\n $50-80k conditional fee, discounted by dotMeow's financial aid). The\n only way they’d lose if they pull this lever is to another Community\n applicant.\n

\n So in all likelihood, soon you’ll be able to spin around several times\n before nesting down on your own .meow domain.\n

\n\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Cat corner, not to be confused with{\" \"}\n \n kitty-corner\n .\n \n

\n \n (2) They were accepted into ICANN’s{\" \"}\n \n Applicant Support Program\n , so the $227k application fee will be discounted by 75%-85% to\n $34-57k. In practice, winning and running a TLD will cost much more\n than that with conditional fees and operational costs. And there’s no\n guarantee you’ll win! Other applicants could compete for .meow, for\n example.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,421],"9fbc07a4-31e7-11f1-9dd1-42dde27851f2","Domainia.tsx","4d86ac28-31e7-11f1-ac05-42dde27851f2",560,["D",1775500631214],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Domainia() {\n return (\n

Domainia

TL;DR

\n I improved my top-level domain (TLD) wiki! I think it’s quite fun,\n even mesmerizing, to play with. Visit{\" \"}\n \n dotcom.press/tld-wiki\n {\" \"}\n to poke around and submit domains/articles/etc.\n
\n On April 30, ICANN’s 2026 gTLD round—where companies can apply to own\n and sell .whatever{\" \"}\n domains—opens for applications. The last time this happened was 2012,\n which is how we got the majority of those TLDs you see in the wiki.\n Soon, we’ll have hundreds more. It’s an important year for domains!\n

TLD wiki

\n Every day, IANA publishes the{\" \"}\n Root Zone Database.\n It’s where you see that .ai{\" \"}\n belongs to Anguilla\n {\" \"}\n and that PIR owns\n {\" \"}\n .org. In the fall I copied and reformatted that data into\n an interactive grid at{\" \"}\n dotcom.press/tld-wiki, both\n for my own exploration and to crowdsource interesting domain hacks and\n stories.\n

\n That explorer-wiki is my go-to tool when a domain catches my eye while\n surfing the web, or when I’m talking to someone about domains. “Oh, you\n have a .fm{\" \"}\n domain for your podcast? Let’s see, that’s the TLD for the Federated\n States of Micronesia.” “Nice, I like the .how{\" \"}\n domain for your info-site. Who owns that...ah, it’s one of Google’s 46\n TLDs.”\n

\n But that data started to get stale. As of this morning, the wiki now\n pulls IANA data daily from Eric Case’s{\" \"}\n \n iana-data\n {\" \"}\n repository. I also added filters for exploration and deep links for\n better URL sharing. There are many more views to paint from the rich\n data, like which TLDs are linked to IDNs or which are open for public\n registration. If you have requests, let me know!\n

\n I owe a huge thank you to Eric for collecting and organizing the data.\n His repo’s readme is educational and well written, too, if you’re keen\n to learn more about the data:\n

\n
\n IANA and ICANN publish a lot of canonical, interesting, and useful\n {\" \"}\n structured{\" \"}\n information about the top-level domain namespace. This project fetches\n nightly copies of their data, and jams it into a single{\" \"}\n data/generated/tlds.json{\" \"}\n file so that it’s all in a single place. It’s sort of an API-in-a-box,\n for exploring the TLD cinematic universe.\n
\n

\n As for why this project is particularly relevant now...\n

The 2026 round

\n This morning, there are 1,594 TLDs in the Root Zone. Starting at the end\n of this month, organizations can apply to own, operate, and sell the\n next batch of Internet domain extensions. It’s the first such\n opportunity since 2012. It costs $227k to even apply for a new TLD\n (without financial aid) and likely double that to actually operate year\n to year. The round is expected to bring Serious Money into domain\n governance. One section in ICANN’s applicant guidebook estimates a range\n of 500 to 3,500 applications. In order of magnitude, topping that range\n could mean ~$1 billion in fees alone. And if two companies want the same\n word, auctions could bring in tens or hundreds of millions more.\n

\n But what do we know about those applications, other than the rules of\n the road laid out by ICANN?\n

\n We know of the{\" \"}\n \n queer nonprofit applying\n {\" \"}\n for .meow. We know that Nova Registry—the{\" \"}\n .link owner—is{\" \"}\n \n applying for 200ish strings\n . We know that the crypto world has{\" \"}\n \n largely given up\n {\" \"}\n on Web3 “alt roots” in favor of traditional “Web2” domains, and that\n they have gobs of money to spend.\n

\n But we—and I mean we the general public—don’t actually know much at all\n about who’ll apply for what. Donuts (since rebranded to the more corpo\n “Identity Digital”){\" \"}\n \n applied for 307\n {\" \"}\n strings in 2012. Google{\" \"}\n \n applied for 101\n . Amazon{\" \"}\n \n for 76\n . But Google{\" \"}\n \n divested its registrar\n {\" \"}\n a few years ago. Does that decision have portent on its registry plans?\n Was the 2012 round a ZIRP-y thing, or will we see just as much or more\n money (presumably lots of crypto and AI¹) this time around?\n

\n The way everyone involved talks about the 2012 round, it sounds like\n total domainia². There was “the glitch,” where ICANN’s\n application system accidentally exposed the private data of applicants\n to one another, so competitors could inspect the financial ammunition\n and application plans of their competition. There was ICANN’s “digital\n archery” program (that they killed at the last minute) where applicants\n would compete to submit the earliest-timestamped server request to win a\n TLD, kind of like the server arms race among high-frequency traders on\n Wall Street. There were costly geopolitical fights, like Amazon’s\n dispute with Brazil and most of South America over{\" \"}\n .amazon. And there are many legal battles still ongoing\n over a decade later, like the .web{\" \"}\n war, in which Verisign paid $135 million for it in an auction and has\n made exactly $0 so far.\n

\n I’m getting closer and closer to that seat edge waiting for more\n domainia to unfold in the 2026 round.\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) It’s out of scope for this write-up, but much has been written\n about AI’s impact on domains (or really, much has been written about\n AI’s impact on everything, and domains are part of everything). For\n example, domain doomers might say that the whole point of domains was\n to give us humans memorable nicknames for IP addresses, and machines\n don’t need that. Domain defenders might say, now wait a minute, AI\n makes it easier to build websites than ever (sloppy as they may be),\n and a trusted, branded domain \"front door\" is more important than\n ever.\n \n

\n \n (2) “Domainia” is another title I’ve considered for the book. I think\n it’d better suit a book more specifically covering domaining and all\n the speculative investment in domains. Like David Kesmodel’s book,\n “The Domain Game.” Reply to share your two cents on “Domainia” or my\n working title, “dot com et al: the secret life of domains.”\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,430],"a359bca8-9eda-11f0-b799-0224a6c84d84","Conferences.tsx","7507ed2a-9eda-11f0-8c4b-0224a6c84d84",350,["D",1759332232894],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Conferences() {\n return (\n

Talking domains

\n And now for something completely different...I'll be talking domains and\n listening to others talk domains in three cities over the next\n month-ish, and I'd love your feedback and company.\n

StartupCincy Week

\n Next week I'm giving a demo and a talk at{\" \"}\n StartupCincy Week. The first\n will be part of Best of Demo Night kicking off at 3:15pm on Monday from\n the Woodward Theater, and the second is scheduled for 1:45pm on\n Wednesday at the Marketer Collaborative.\n

\n This morning I published a{\" \"}\n \n blog version of my talk\n {\" \"}\n on my personal site. It's a how-to guide for startups on finding the\n right domain. It is a first draft, and{\" \"}\n I want your feedback. Tell me what you disagree with,\n share your domain anecdotes, or offer your knee-jerk two cents.\n

ICANN84

\n At the end of the month (Oct 25-30) I'm heading to Dublin, Ireland for\n {\" \"}\n ICANN84.\n I'm excited to attend sessions on{\" \"}\n \n Universal Acceptance\n , DNS, the 2026 gTLD round, and much more. Most of all, though, I'm\n excited to meet people and get a sense of how the organization that runs\n domains runs itself. Let me know if you'll be there!\n

\n Feel free to send me any ICANN questions{\" \"}\n or curiosities you'd like me to pursue, or reading resources you\n recommend to prep for the trip (I've got Milton Mueller's book,{\" \"}\n Declaring Independence in Cyberspace).\n

NamesCon

\n In early November (the 5th and 6th) I'll be in Miami for NamesCon. Come\n {\" \"}\n join! Prices go up this\n Friday, October 3rd. Like ICANN84, I think this will feel like\n boots-on-the-ground, capital J Journalism. Also like ICANN84,{\" \"}\n send me questions{\" \"}\n or curiosities you want me to track down.\n

\n The conference has an investing bent, but there'll be attendance from\n registries, registrars, investors, brokers, startups, lawyers, ISPs,\n ICANN, and more. There will be a talk from the owners of the first ever\n domain registered (symbolics.com, 40 years ago in 1985), a live domain\n auction, and even a server throwing contest (literally throwing them,\n like shot put or discus).\n

Next up

\n If you have any relevant conferences or meetups on your calendar, let me\n know. The most fun part about writing this book so far, hands down, has\n been meeting so many people (and chatting with old friends and\n coworkers), which is saying something, since I love the heads-down\n reading and writing of it all.\n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,438],"5ea0b524-d9ec-11f0-821e-42dde27851f2","Christmas.tsx","f6caa902-d9e9-11f0-b069-42dde27851f2",444,["D",1765826967151],17,"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Christmas() {\n return (\n

Holiday gift guide: domains for the whole family

\n A domain can be a wonderful, touching gift for the right friend or\n family member. I’m thinking of that creative sibling or friend of yours\n who you think ought to share their work with the world. I don’t mean\n {\" \"}\n work{\" \"}\n in the sense that it must be polished or professional, or feel like\n “work” at all. By work{\" \"}\n I mean writing, music, photography, drawing, dancing, recipes, a\n tutorial on replacing the headlights of a 2005 Subaru Forester—whatever.\n

\n You can buy domains for your children, too! They might want it (someday)\n to publish their art or music, write, or do something else entirely that\n we can’t yet imagine. Setting up a website could be a fun project to\n work on together with them.\n

Your corner of the internet

\n A personal website can be literally anything you want it to be. And\n that’s the point—it’s yours.{\" \"}\n \n Your corner of the Internet¹.\n {\" \"}\n The walled gardens of social media will come and go, but a domain is\n your space. The algorithm won’t change on you overnight.\n

\n If you don’t own your{\" \"}\n own domain yet, I hope you’ll buy one as a gift to yourself first. I\n feel strongly that you should own a personal domain, even if you don’t\n know what to do with it yet. A personal website can be a low stakes\n creative outlet, a powerful career building tool, or anything in\n between. At worst, it’s ten dollars a year for a blank canvas waiting\n for you whenever you’re ready².\n

\n I often tell people that no one will visit your website at first,{\" \"}\n and that’s a good thing. People will only go there if you send\n them a link. When you start out, your website is a little forest where\n your trees fall silently. Or a{\" \"}\n digital garden\n {\" \"}\n where you can plant seeds, water, prune, propagate, and re-pot. That\n means you have time to explore, experiment, and tinker. You can find\n your voice and style over time. Again, you’re not beholden to that\n algorithm everyone is always talking about.\n

Same day delivery

\n Unlike many holiday gifts, this one takes five minutes, and there’s no\n shipping involved. Go to porkbun.com\n {\" \"}\n or your favorite registrar³ and look up{\" \"}\n firstlast .com. If it’s available, grab it! Or better yet,\n if you can get lastname .com, then you can have{\" \"}\n first @ lastname .com{\" \"}\n as your email (and so can everyone in your family)⁴.\n

\n You don’t have to go with a dot com, of course. There are{\" \"}\n \n hundreds of expressive alternatives\n {\" \"}\n to consider: .art, .food, .me,\n {\" \"}\n .mom, .dad, .beer,{\" \"}\n .cool, .earth, .wtf,{\" \"}\n .fyi,{\" \"}\n .christmas, and on and on. I love the artistic touch of\n choosing a domain ending that fits your taste, but I do also like owning\n my full name dot com because it’s my name and my identity.\n

\n I’ve bought domains for a handful of friends and family members over the\n years (which, btw, if you’re keeping track, was well before I had the\n idea to write a book about domains). My brother spent an hour or so\n setting up a simple website where he can share videos of himself playing\n guitar and singing, for example. As far as I can tell—and I do think\n it’s hard to pretend liking a gift—the domains I’ve given have been well\n received. When I gift a domain, I always tell the recipient that it\n includes me as a consultant of sorts for website building and\n brainstorming purposes. If I have given you a domain and you’re reading\n this now, that offer still stands!\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) I love this phrase, “your corner of the internet.” I saw it first\n on my friend Danny’s website,{\" \"}\n dannyguo.com, but it’s also the\n tagline for{\" \"}\n mmm.page, a website builder/internet\n canvas (and one of my favorite projects on the internet).\n \n

\n \n (2) A domain is a gift that keeps on giving—er, that you keep on\n giving—because domains must be renewed yearly. $10.46 for a dot com is\n not bad (cheaper than most burritos), so hopefully the financial\n burden doesn’t stop you.\n \n

\n \n (3) I usually buy domains on Cloudflare, but there are tons of other\n registrars (Porkbun, Vercel, Squarespace, etc.). A dot com should cost\n you about $11. I also like{\" \"}\n instantdomainsearch.com\n {\" \"}\n for searching domains.\n \n

\n \n (4) It turns out millspaugh.com\n {\" \"}\n is owned by a furniture company in Hudson Valley, New York. They’ve\n been in operation since 1858! I’d love to pay a visit to the store\n someday. I’m not aware of any relation, but it’s run by a father and\n his son, whose name is...Pete. As much as I’d love to own the domain,\n I’m at peace knowing it’s in good hands.\n \n

\n );\n}",[],[184,302,446],"bc3aad28-a8fc-11f0-b8df-0224a6c84d84","Anguilla.tsx","30d7c3d2-a8f8-11f0-b83a-0224a6c84d84",379,["D",1760446389154],"/** @jsxImportSource npm:hono@3/jsx */\n\nexport default function Anguilla() {\n return (\n

You can’t spell Anguilla without AI

\n You could argue that AI is more important to Anguilla than any other\n country right now. Almost half of their national income this year will\n come from AI (sort of, via .ai domain registrations).¹{\" \"}\n I almost wrote that this makes Anguilla{\" \"}\n The AI Capital of the World, but for that to be true this story\n would have to be relevant outside of Anguilla. AI’s proportional impact\n may be more economically meaningful in Anguilla than anywhere else up\n until now, but why should the rest of the world care?\n

\n Anguilla is about 160 miles dead east of mainland Puerto Rico, splitting\n the gap between the British- and US Virgin Islands. It’s 16 miles long\n by 3 miles wide—35 square miles—or about the size of Maine. Around\n 15,000 people live there, so it’s smaller than the undergraduate student\n body at University of Virginia where I went to college. It’s a British\n overseas territory. Cars drive on the left, and there’s no public\n transport. Its economy has mostly been tourism and offshore banking.\n Outside of fish, Anguilla has few natural economic resources. But it has\n one important unnatural resource: its .ai top-level domain.\n

\n Anguilla is the A-island{\" \"}\n (or AI Land). This matters outside of Anguilla because (1) it’s a case\n study of the economic value of a TLD, and (2) over half a million\n registrants trusted a tiny hurricane-prone island to keep the lights on\n for their domain, probably without knowing it.\n

A hurricane in Anguilla took down my website

\n In 2017, Hurricane Irma caused $320 million in damage to Anguilla.\n That’s ten times the $32 million Anguilla earned selling domains in\n 2023. Irma and other hurricanes did not actually crash any Anguillian\n servers, but it was a real risk cited by the new .ai operator.\n

\n In January of this year, the major domain registry Identity Digital{\" \"}\n \n took over operation\n {\" \"}\n of 598,007 .ai{\" \"}\n domains and counting. Before January, those domains relied on a\n connection “to the government’s digital infrastructure through a single\n internet cable to the island.” How many of those half million\n registrants considered hurricane risk, or even knew their{\" \"}\n .ai domain relied on an island in the Caribbean?\n

\n Before Identity Digital took over, .ai{\" \"}\n domains were managed by an expat cryptographer named{\" \"}\n Vince Cate{\" \"}\n who basically inherited that role because he wanted a .ai website.\n

\n
\n I came to Anguilla in 1994. I wanted to have a domain name that\n was .ai. So I reached out to Jon Postel—he was the one that was\n in charge of all these top-level domains. He said, there’s nobody\n running .ai, do you want to run .ai? And I said, “Okay.” That was\n really how it went!{\" \"}\n \n (IEEE Spectrum)\n \n
\n

\n As casual as that sounds, it was not obvious then how important domains\n would become to Anguilla and the{\" \"}\n \n nearly one million domain owners\n {\" \"}\n that depend on .ai{\" \"}\n now. To his credit, Vince seems to have been a good steward of the\n domain. Many countries have mismanaged their TLD in one way or another.\n Tokelau, an island one tenth the size of Anguilla, sold its{\" \"}\n \n .tk\n {\" \"}\n domain to a Dutch guy who I guess did a much worse job than Vince,\n letting .tk become{\" \"}\n \n massively abused for cybercrime\n . Tuvalu, another tiny island with a killer TLD, earns serious money\n from .tv, but it left a lot on the table. Here’s Vince:\n

\n
\n Tuvalu gave [domain registrations] to a big foreign company, and\n locked themselves in for 50 years. And we’re doing it locally. So the\n government is getting almost all the money. And that’s not what was\n happening in Tuvalu, right? Most of the money was not going to the\n country.\n
\n

\n But Anguilla almost fumbled .ai, too. Vince again:\n

\n
\n At some point, I said, this shouldn’t be in my name, right? So I\n changed the admin contact to be the government of Anguilla.\n Somebody else saw that and convinced the government to give it to\n them, so it went to this company in Taiwan. After a couple of\n years, they disappeared. They didn’t answer emails or phone calls or\n anything. And we got it back. A number of small countries got really\n messed up by losing their domain names, and I would say we kind of\n came close.\n
\n

\n Identity Digital reportedly gets a 10% cut of domain registrations and\n renewals,{\" \"}\n per BBC.\n Domain revenue hit $39 million in 2024 and sounds like it’ll almost\n double in 2025. In an interview on BBC radio, Anguillian government\n official Jose Vanterpool said those funds are being used to pay down\n debt; invest in infrastructure like a new airport terminal, roads, and\n renewable energy; fund schools and training; and “save for a rainy day”\n (which I think he meant both figuratively and literally, as in\n hurricanes). He also talked about protecting wealth for future\n generations through a development fund. Hypothetically, Anguilla could\n even fund a Universal Basic Income of $2-5k per citizen (kind of like\n {\" \"}\n \n Alaska’s oil-funded dividend\n ).\n

The economics of top-level domains

\n I like to think of Anguilla’s domain business as a company instead of a\n country. There are plenty of companies with more employees than\n Anguilla’s 15,000 citizens, more property than Anguilla’s 35 square\n miles, and much more money than Anguilla’s $39m in domain revenue. I\n don’t know how many people were helping Vince Cate, or if it really was\n just him running .ai{\" \"}\n for thirty years—either way, it’s a good business built around one\n valuable asset.\n

But is it replicable?

\n Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .ai{\" \"}\n are assigned based on an international standard\n (\n ISO 3166\n ), but generics (gTLDs) like .xyz{\" \"}\n are invented and allocated or auctioned to{\" \"}\n registries.\n It costs $227,000 to even apply for a gTLD, and auctions can climb into\n the millions (like $41 million for .shop{\" \"}\n in 2016). Dedicated registries like Identity Digital and{\" \"}\n XYZ{\" \"}\n have raised millions to bet on generics, as have bigger players like\n {\" \"}\n Google and Amazon.\n

\n There are{\" \"}\n over a thousand\n {\" \"}\n gTLDs already, and we’re going to see another flood from the upcoming\n {\" \"}\n \n 2026 gTLD round\n {\" \"}\n (the first since 2012). I am curious to see what new names are invented,\n how much money gets invested, and how many new registries enter the\n market in the new round. How big will my{\" \"}\n TLD wiki/exploration tool\n {\" \"}\n grow over time?\n

\n It’s one of the topics I’m most eager to learn about later this month\n when I go to Dublin for{\" \"}\n ICANN84.\n Reply if you have questions you’d like me to pursue while I’m there.\n Thanks for reading.\n

Footnotes

\n \n (1) Anguilla’s Minister of IT (among other things) Jose Vanterpool\n went on a{\" \"}\n \n BBC radio interview\n {\" \"}\n last month and said that .ai{\" \"}\n registrations will make up ~47% of Anguilla’s income this year.\n \n

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