Business 2.0 ran a great article in their most recent issue about dot-com moguls. They may call themselves “moguls,” but those of us in the naming industry just call them a royal pain in the butt.
These guys buy up and squat on hundreds of thousands of valuable domain names. Usually they have no interest in selling any of the domains in their portfolio. This becomes a sticky situation when trying to come up with company names for clients that require the exact dot-com URL. We have bumped into the Frank Schilling’s Cayman Islands company a few times in the past. We quickly learned that his domains are not for sale, and not to recommend any name for which he owns the URL.
In some ways you kind of respect these folks for having the insight to buy up domains and turn their portfolios into a lucrative business model. Most of the time though, you just feel helplessly annoyed that you can’t have the perfect domain for your perfect name.
