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Their names are legion
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March 10, 2000 | Want to know how many domain names have been registered that include, say, the phrase "domainnames"? Domainsurfer will tell you (1,362, as of Wednesday, plus 277 for "domain-names"). It will also list up to 800 of them, and allow you to look up who owns each variation, from 0-0domainnames.com (which seems to dead-end on a West Virginia travel page) on down. Scott Rosenberg "Whois," the venerable tool for finding information on any domain name, provides you with a contact name and address for every individual query. But it doesn't offer the kind of aggregate results Domainsurfer serves up. Only with that level of information can you begin discerning patterns in the domain name game and acquire a sense of the dimension and shape of what Domainsurfer dubs the "domain namespace." Spend a little time with Domainsurfer and you get a clear picture of just how crazed that game has become over the past six years of the Web's commercialization. Domainsurfer's data covers 12,570,481 records as of March 1. Which means that any conceivable phrase, word or set of characters will turn up an astonishingly extensive array of registered domains. There are, for instance, 4,439 domains containing the word "Salon" somewhere in their names -- and though that does include a whole set of names built on the Biblical theme "1Thessalonians.com," none of which actually serve Web pages, mostly it's variations on the "salon" concept (both hair and literary). Even if you limit your search to names beginning with "salon" -- a nice capability of the Domainsurfer engine -- you'll find 1,438 names to sort through. The name insanity goes ballistic once you stray beyond the mundane into the realm of porn -- where you can find 52,977 domains that include "sex" and 13,117 domains that include the letters "XXX." But even the adult-entertainment sector can't compete with the tech-industry buzzword business: You'll find 30,892 domains that include "cyber," 17,558 that include "virtual" and a whopping 95,627 that begin with "e-". There are 10,594 registered domain names that include the phrase "dotcom," spelled out in utterly redundant fashion. Has whoever paid to register the name "builderdotcom.com" ever tried to say it out loud? It's hardly news that a lot of people are spending a lot of money to stockpile domain names in the hope that they'll be able to resell them for big bucks. What's increasingly otherworldly is the apparent value some investors are placing on the whole domain-name infrastructure. Prompting these thoughts, of course, is the news this week that Verisign is purchasing Network Solutions, the company that for most of the Internet's history had a monopoly on the assignment of domain names and that still holds something of a chokehold on the business. (Network Solutions is responsible for the registration of about 8 million of those 12 million-plus names in the Domainsurfer listings.) Verisign has, to date, focused on the sale of "digital certificates," which guarantee the authenticity of electronic documents, and its market valuation is sky-high; that has enabled it to plunk down a jaw-dropping $21 billion for Network Solutions (though the amount drifted down to $17 billion as stock prices fluctuated after the deal was announced).
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