Google to kill domain tasting?

[Devil Dog]

interesting if true....

http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/01/google-to-kill-domain-tasting/

 

[Provider]

do you taste domains?

 

[Devil Dog]

do you taste domains?

Yes.

 

[draggar]

I don't think so. So what, you'll miss out on 5 day's revenue. This industry is all about risk taking and this will close one aspect of the big safety net that a lot of the tasters abuse. If you legitimately need to take advantage of the grace period, then this wouldn't affect you either.

 

[tetrapak]

Yes.

Yummy.

 

[Theo]

ICANN(T) should be ashamed for this backdoor in domain registrations. Essentially, that's millions of dollars in lost revenue to the .com/.net Registry, who could be charging a restocking fee.

Or was that a trade-off between ICANN(T) and Verisign in order to renew the lucrative contract?

 

[gawnd]

this is good news in my opinion. its not the tasting so much that bothers me, but the kiting.

 

[Bill Roy]

Fantastic!

 

[owenw]

LOL. You don't need Google to count the traffic on a tasted domain. After 5 days you just delete all domains which received less than X number of hits and then monetize the ones you keep. This isn't going to stop domain tasting.

 

[ksinclair]

I dont think it stops domain tasting, but its good public relations for google.

The tasters can still serve up test ppc index pages to see what people click on, so they can not only see traffic but measure what the traffic wants. They just wont serve up any ads, or find other ad networks that will service the market.

Its up to ICANN, and ICANN does not seem to have a strong enough leadership.

Kevin

 

[Devil Dog]

Its up to ICANN, and ICANN does not seem to have a strong enough leadership.

Kevin

This is what's sad, why is it Google, if true who is taking it to the tasters and kiters and not ICANNt(.com)?

plug for acroplex​

 

[Theo]

Adam should be on the ICANN panel!

 

[QuantumBeam]

The whole pending delete period, redemption period, domain tasting scenario should be discontinued. The day a domain expires it should become available to register to the first person who types it in to the registry after expiration. That way it is open field for anyone. eace:

 

[owenw]

You mean like it is now? It's not open to everyone now. Domains are grabbed in milliseconds by dirty registrars that you can't possibly hope to beat.

 

[ksinclair]

It seems quite abusive to me that the registrars have this ability. Its seems wrong to use their priveleged position this way.

In Real estate, if a home is foreclosed on, the bank sells it on the open market, in a fair way for anyone to bid on. To me, expired domains should go in a fair bidding pool, anyone can bid, and on even terms. Highest bidder wins. But who gets that money? That is a hard question to solve. What if the registrar got their $10 like on new registrations, and the excess, if any, goes to the UN or something worthy like that?

Kevin

 

[Luc]

My money says google won't go through with this.

First off, they will lose money, and being a public company now, the investors will not like that. They've gone a long way from the "do no evil" approach and are now just another big corporation that answers to its stock holders.

Second, they tried this before, with adult domains. Soon enough, they went back and were monitizing them.

Finally, this won't stop tasting, it may stop kitting. Like the other guys said, all the taster has to know is whether the traffic and clicks are there, because if they are so will the cash.

Luc

 

[petrosc]

Tasting does not hurt the industry, kiting is. We all(or most of us) do tasting in a low scale, it's not free for us and it's a very useful and money saving practice. What hurts the industry is Kiting. Registrars that register hundreds of thousands of names at once, take advantage of the 5 day grace period, then drop them all, get full refund, and re-register only the ones with traffic. Then re-drop them within the next 5 days, get a refund again and re-reg them. This goes on and on and they do it for free. That is what hurts the industry.

IMO, google will not stop this as long as Yahoo (and the new MSN feed) allows it. They are making a lot of money like that and by banning it they are just giving this money away to Yahoo and MSN(because that is where the kiters will move their practice to). If the 3 feed providers agree to stop this, then it might happen. Google alone will not attempt to stop it, it would be stupid of them