ICANN has sat up and taken notice when it comes to the shady practices of “domain tasting”. I hate to be one to call myself a profit, but back on podcast 138 I am pretty sure I said:
Where is ICANN with this type of practice? I say if they were all over RegisterFly for what they were doing then Network Solutions really should not be treated any differently.
ICANN Comes in to Save the Day!
I am happy to see ICANN has decided to stand up and do something about this money grubbing nonsense. Under current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a new domain name has a five-day grace period to back out and receive a total refund. The problem is people use this period to test how well the domain name does in the real world and also slap ads all over it to make a buck.
So what is the solution? ICANN is talking about charging the ICANN registration fee right from the start instead of waiting. That way companies and individuals would get less of a “freebie”. The cost would be picked up by the domain name register and hopefully this would end the practice of people testing to see how profitable a domain name is for free.
What About Front Runners?
This will also hurt companies like Network Solutions that have started “front running” domains (a fancy name for the same dirty tactics). This is where a domain name register will register your domain name searches and offer to resell them to you for a higher price.
The whole thing kinda reminds me of the mafia and being called in to “do a favor” for the godfather himself. Google is also getting a chance to get some positive press out of all of this. They said that they will no longer allow AdSense revenue to be collected on domains that are less than four days old. Now that will cost Google some big bucks but nice to see that they are doing the right thing. What they are losing in finances they are gaining in public trust in praise.
