back to article Amazon bags control of .book and .pay domains – but NOT .cloud

Bookseller-turned-bazaar Amazon has beaten off competition from eight other companies, including Google and publisher Bowker, to win the right to sell domains ending in .book. It's not known how much Amazon paid since the gTLD was bought at private auction, although it is believed to have been between $5m and $10m – Amazon …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    .dont.give.a.shit

    Who cares? As is often opined: a fool and his(*) cash is easily parted"

    You might as well buy "memorable" IP addresses, say 1.1.1.1 (I know a man who ... )

    This is how a general interweb session goes when the seeker does not know where to go:

    1. Fire up search engine (if you have Bing or Yahoo come up by accident, use that to find Google)

    2. Type in misspelt search terms

    3. Click on link

    .willywaving: buy a personalized numberplate - it might have some residual value but you'll still look like a twat.

    Cheers

    Jon

    * or her - fooldom is not sexist.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: .dont.give.a.shit

      > it might have some residual value but you'll still look like a twat.

      Just like signing your posts.

  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Dot dot

    Most of this is a waste of time and money. The only one that vaguely sounds interesting is the .dot domain. I'm sure the dot.dot sub-domain will go for a lot a money! It reminds me of this guy with his email address dotat.at/email.html

    1. VinceH

      Re: Dot dot

      "It reminds me of this guy with his email address dotat.at/email.html"

      Neat. I've sometimes pondered sillies like that, but never actually looked to see if the domains were available - partly because I tend to only think of these things while driving, and forget by the time I'm back at a desk - but this guy's obviously beaten my ponderings by a long way (probably at least 10 years if he registered the domain in '97).

      (And since I'm thinking about it now that I'm sitting at the computer, I do now have a silly tautological domain name.)

  3. solo

    Top level fraud

    Suppose, I registered a site 'troller.com' to run a business. I obviously need to register it as a trademark. Now, anyone else cannot be forced to stop using similar names, for example, 'troller.uk', 'troller.org' as that amounts to litigation and luck. So, I will now have to protect business from fraud by registering this on all the other (dozens of) TLDs. Now I will have to buy their super premium domain names.

    On the other side, if a person is genuinely wants to open a site 'troller.org' for public awareness (no commercial reason), he'd be very afraid because he'd be on my mercy because if I sue him, he doesn't have cash to protect him.

    Solution, anyone?

    1. FlatSpot
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Top level fraud

      Doesn't it depend if they are trying to pass off (passing off) as your business in which case its bad and you can sue, otherwise you cant.

  4. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Commercially valuable?

    To ICANN, perhaps; to someone visiting my site (and therefore to me)? What does he care? Given that the average user will cheerfully attempt to log on to his bank account @russian.spammer.com, as the nice friendly email told him to, what's the point?

    By the way - what will a browser autocomplete to now?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    suck

    gov.sigh.

  6. Christoph

    How long before Amazon decide that since they now own the word 'book' they can sue anyone else who tries to use it?

    1. xeroks

      or prevent the opposition from using them.

      e.g. waterstones.book

      1. KrisM

        This one will happen right away - as Amazon now own .book, in effect a registrar for the domain, its highly unlikely their business plan is to let the competition use it - what would be the point?

        More likely is they will merge it around their kindle service, and .book will just be a byword for Amazon! (i.e if you see a domain ending in .book, it can ONLY be Amazon's service!

  7. KroSha

    Fanboi paradise

    Microsoft, Apple and Linux are all available on the .sucks domain. Grab one quick!

  8. Michael Hawkes
    Headmaster

    Typo

    "...has increasingly be used..." should be "...has increasingly been used..."

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