Generic Domain Names

This Monday, we are expected to witness a total solar eclipse – the last eclipse until 2044 that will be visible from the continental United States. I am headed up to Maine with friends for a day of skiing and an eclipse watch party at Sunday River.

To safely view the eclipse, I am going to buy a pair of eclipse glasses. I took a quick look at Amazon, and there are a ton of brands I’d never heard of, including a couple I couldn’t even pronounce (YDKOJGW, for example). In addition to the plethora of brands, it isn’t easy to know if the glasses are going to be protective. If I buy a pair of glasses that doesn’t protect my eyes, what is the point of even buying them?

According to an article in TechCrunch this afternoon, “Richard Socher, former chief scientist at Salesforce,” is looking to take on Google with a new search engine. To me, the most interesting aspect of this article was the domain name that was chosen for this new brand: You.com.

In doing some research about the You.com domain name, it appears that there is a connection with Salesforce Founder and CEO Marc Benioff. Historical Whois records at DomainTools show Mr. Benioff was listed as the registrant of the You.com domain name several years ago. The domain name has been registered under Whois privacy for a number of years, so it is unclear whether he is currently the registrant.

Loser.com is one of the most interesting and famous domain names, despite hardly being used as a standalone website. During the 2020 US Presidential campaign, Loser.com forwarded to a YouTube video featuring US Senator Lindsay Graham lavishing praise on former Vice President Joe Biden while ridiculing President Donald Trump.

Now that the US Presidential election has been (nearly) decided with voters electing Joe Biden as the next POTUS, Loser.com is once again redirecting to Donald Trump’s Wikipedia page. If you visit Loser.com, you will end up on Wikipedia. Ironically, Loser.com had previously forwarded to Kanye West’s Wikipedia page in the past, and Kanye West was also ran a failed campaign for President.

Jamie Zoch shared a link on Twitter to Y Combinator’s 2019 Top Companies List. He mentioned that most of the companies own their brand match .com domain names, which is no surprise to me:

Y Combinator’s 2019 top companies list, hats off to you! Each valued at $150M+. The overwhelming majority of all the companies in the list own the exact match .com #domain to what they brand as. #startup #domainnames #brand #ItMatters https://t.co/9xNHU9Dx0t

— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) October 3, 2019