AOL Gets Into User Generated Domain Name Speculation

from the finally-taking-over-the-world dept

Wed, Aug 9th 2006 12:48pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Now that AOL has dropped its subscription costs, it's moving to roll out new free features in hopes of stemming its rapid customer losses. Yesterday it announced it would freely distribute anti-virus software to anyone who wanted at. Today it announced free .com registrations; well, sort of. Users will be able to select any available domain for use as an email address, but AOL will actually own domain. There's little to stop the company from, at some point down the road, using the good addresses for their own purposes, particularly if they fall into disuse. So while there's been a resurgance of speculators buying up domain names, they may have a hard time competing with AOL's use of crowdsourcing to discover and register available names.

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14 Comments

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Erstazi, 9 Aug 2006 @ 12:58pm

...
Down with AOL!
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s, 9 Aug 2006 @ 12:58pm

Aol is dying
All that comes to mind is one of the last scenes in Terminator 2 where the futuristic robot is changing forms in the lavapot (or whatever) to see if it can escape.

The only thing happening from this I can see is AOL trying to sell the domains back to the user once they get fixated on using them for an extortionate (new word) amount of money and pissing off any remaining users they may have.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2006 @ 1:18pm

leverage guys, its called leverage
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Paul, 9 Aug 2006 @ 1:53pm

Virus Protection?
How can AOL protect against viruses? They are one. They try to spread to as many computers as posible and then they stop them from working properly. It seems hard to use a virus to protect against viruses.
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- Paul B, 9 Aug 2006 @ 2:01pm
  
  Re: Virus Protection?
  Well said Paul, well said!
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  - Ben Damnit, 9 Aug 2006 @ 2:15pm
    
    Re: Re: Virus Protection?
    We are the borg v9.0 w/top speed. Resistance is futile. Uninstalling is Futile. You will be assimalated.
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- john ashcroft, 9 Aug 2006 @ 5:05pm
  
  Re: Virus Protection?
  Not true, it has been the case several times in the past that a virus will actively seek and destroy other virii it finds on the system that may interfere with it's own operations. While this may all seem like semantecs, it only helps to strenghthen the point that AOL is itself a virus. The only missing piece of the puzzle here is that by definition a virus is software that causes harm, self replicates and carries a destuctive payload...hold on...all these are true as well.
  conclusion:AOL is a virus.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2006 @ 2:17pm

That was molten lead.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2006 @ 2:21pm

AOL is dying a slow death. Should that happen...

DIBSIES ON THE AOL DOMAINS!!
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Rick, 9 Aug 2006 @ 3:42pm

Great!
Now I definintely hate AOL.

This should fall under some sort of domain squatting law I hope....
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Sohrab, 10 Aug 2006 @ 2:32am

seems like AOL is taking some interesting measures.
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Crowdsource, 10 Aug 2006 @ 1:52pm

This isn’t a good example of crowdsourcing. It’s not even a good idea!
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Angela Ciccone, 1 Dec 2006 @ 11:05am

They stole my domain. I want it back!!! I need it. My livelihood is being adversely affected by this. I have bills to pay. There must be a law against this. If not, we need one.
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Crowdsourcing, 28 Feb 2012 @ 12:18pm

Nothing we can do about that, this is how crowdsourcing works and AOL is taking advantage of this like most of us do;)
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