Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Miami Herald June 3, 1996
Matthew Grossman collects Internet domain names as trophies.
The 21-year-old University of Arizona student has registered dozens of trademark names, including 7up.com, dirtdevil.com and universalstudios.com, only to give them up for token gifts.
Grossman askedd for and received a case of Seven-Up and a T-shirt for giving up the name to the soft-drink maker. He got 10 amusement-park passes when he turned over knottsberryfarm.com.
Some of his other transactions: a vacuum cleaner for dirtdevil.com. a case of ice cream for breyers.com, and surf wear for billabong.com.
“I always ask for something that really doesn’t cost the company,” says Grossman, who says he registered about 100 names before Internic – the firm that handles domain name registrations – began charging a $100 fee.
A domain name is the core of your Internet address, whether for e-mail ([email protected]) or on the Web (www.domain.com). On the Internet frontier. domain names been pretty much doled out to whomever claims them first.
While Grossman ended his pursuit for trophies when claims started to cost. others have continued to grab.
David Graves. business manager for Internic, says 364,000 domain names have already been registered, and 10,000 are being processed weekly. But some predict the rush will end soon.
“Most of the good ones are taken,” says David Milligan, who founded a British Columbia firm called Vanity Mail Serviecs, which provides e-mail addresses and domain names.
To that. Graves says yes – and no.
“Among the single simple words, there might not be many left,” he notes. “But that doesn’t consider the combinations of single, simple words.” A domain name can be as long as 27 letters.