I work in the domain name industry and closely with a number of domain investors.
There's a MASSIVE gulf between domain name flipping and domain name investing.
Domain name investors are serious people. They can spend huge amounts of money securing really generic names that they hope hold intrinsic value because of their broad appeal. They then spend huge amounts of money maintaining these portfolios.
A domain name investor will
never hold a domain name ransom to another business. They've purchased a domain name (probably at quite a high cost already) and they'll set it for what they believe is the right price!
Imagine if you bought a shop in an emerging area for £50k 20 years ago. You've spent time and money keeping it up to date and maintaining it. You now hope to sell it for £500k, which is in line with similar properties in the area since investment has been pumped in and the big boys of retail have boosted the price of commercial property in the area and there's much less to go around as more of the property is taken! (Basic supply / demand, consider that in the domain name industry, where the very best names were taken early, there's now millions and millions of domains registered and not that many good ones to go around any more!)
Would you just sell up if somebody came along and offered £100k? Of course not. Could you argue that person was stifling business? Of course not. They're just holding out for the price that they want.
They don't squat on already trademarked terms or try and steal other businesses traffic. Good domain investors make a lot of money, they're not interested in your startup wanting an incredibly valuable domain at a seriously cut price, they're wanting the big money from the big players in whichever industry the domain relates to.
Domain flipping normally takes a mediocre domain and puts up generally quite poor sites to sell for a quick profit. A lot of people are making good money from this too! But I can assure you, they're nowhere near in the same league as the real domain investors out there.
He also said that large companies like Microsoft own thousands of domains from businesses they have bought and should they give them away?
Why should they give them away?
They are a business asset, brought rightfully by Microsoft at some point not infringing on anyone's trademarks!
To help stop the Cybersquatting problem, which by the way I
totally disagree with, there's a process called UDRP for most domain types.
This means if you can prove that someone is squatting on a term that you've trademarked, or is using the domain name in bad faith to damage your company reputation, steal your traffic or a variety of other things, you can force that name into your own ownership.
So ICANN (the governing body of domains) have at least put something into place to stop this as much as they can.
Don't be bitter because someone had the foresight to register that domain name years ago and invest their time and money at a time when it was available!
Think outside the box! look at ccTLDs that have now become gTLDs like .co or .io? Try adding your location into your domain name? Spend a few hours coming up with an original name for your site!
There are still lots of good domain names out there, I see people registering them every day!
Sorry to sound a little harsh to the person mentioned in the OP, but I think it's a bit arrogant to say people should give up assets they've secured legally just because someone else wants to use it.
People who don't understand the industry don't see this, hopefully a few more people will after reading this post ...
