Apple User Podcast

Domain Names, back in the boom, they were worth a fortune, proof:

The sale of the domain name “Business.com” achieved, at the time, a record domain-name sale at $7.5 million by Marc Ostrofsky to eCompanies.

However, once search engines evolved to index relevent content, the domain name became irrelevant, because flickr.com had no meaning, google.com had no meaning, like all good things they developed a service and hence users went to flickr because it was good, not because wereagoodphotographysite.com was its domain name.

Marc Ostrofsky made the mistake of paying for a relevant sounding domain name, everybody said, that was dumb and moved on…

Except one group. The predators… they registered flickt.com, flicjr.com, fliclr.com and all the other mistypes of the webs top fifty web sites, why? to fill the copycat site with

(a) Similar content and capture the unsuspecting user to a lower quality more expensive service. (e.g. http://piratebay.com/ a completely fake spam spyware inducing version of the authentic piratebay.org)
(b) Fill the page with advertising, banking on the one in ten users who arrive follow the yellow brick road through a few clicks and make the domain owner a little financially better.

So domains still have value as flypaper or as its called goodwill, someone must explain this to Ralph Girkins, president and owner of Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp. near Toledo, Ohio

The story from CNN via gmsv.com reads:

“If there’s any company even less happy with YouTube than the entertainment outfits, it’s Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp. near Toledo, Ohio, which has the misfortune of doing business on the Web at utube.com, its site since 1994. Since the video-sharing site took off, Universal Tube has had trouble keeping its site up under the load of misguided searchers (68 million page views in August alone). “It’s killing us,” said Ralph Girkins, president and owner, told CNNMoney. “All my worldwide reps use our Web site. Customers all over the world use it to bring up photos of the machinery, descriptions and specifications there. … And a customer who can’t find my $3-$400,000 machine online will just keep searching the Web until they find it elsewhere.” Also troublesome — do a Google search for “utube,” and links to YouTube come up first (one at the moment titled “lazyboy - underwear goes inside the pants”), which tends to put off potential customers. Girkins hasn’t been able to find anyone at YouTube or Google to ask for help, and I don’t think they owe him any, unless as a goodwill gesture. But then again, he may want to follow the lead of the entertainment companies and try threat-of-litigation negotiation.”

My response? Sir, I’ll gladly take troublesome utube.com off your hands, I have some friends who could do with 68 MILLION hits a month by 16-24 year old americans looking for videos to watch (see:MSN Soapbox and Dailymotion.com and myspace.com and nbc.com(heck any of the tv networks will take them)).

I’ll send you my opening bid through my people.