We are running out of domain names

This is not something new. Anyone who has ever wanted to register a domain name knows that it is impossible to get the name you want and next to impossible to get anything meaningful. Hence the web startups with strange names like Spotify, misspelt like Flickr, outright weird gnolia (of ma.gnolia.com) and also the trends of adding suffixes to domain names like “fy”, “sy” and so on.

This is almost entirely fault of domain squatters who pay peanuts for domain names and sit on them forever until a buyer is desperate enough to shell out thousands of dollars for the hard work. To ease this pressure ICANN adds new top level domain names or remote islands sell the rights to their top level names to companies (.tv for example)

I personally think the only way out of this is to increase the price of .com registration – a lot. A $200 .com domain (like it used to long long ago) makes squatting very expensive and also stops people from panic buying domain names in case they might need them in the future.

Come on ICANN, go against the market pressures for once!