I remember around 1999 when I used to work for a big ISP and I ran a simple perl script that would "nslookup" all combination of 3 letters domains. It generated a huge list of available domains, but none that called my attention because all the good ones (not just random letters) seemed to be already registered. I would never thought that all those random 3 letter domains would sell for so much money many years later! :-)
I'm missed out on a bunch of profitable tech booms just by a combination of being lazy and by feeling that things like domain scalping are somewhat inherently immoral.
If it's any consolation, it was only profitable because not enough people thought to squat on them so enough of them were turned into sites that made the web interesting enough to become massively popular. I tell myself such things, anyway. :)
I prefer the term "Domain Scalper". As it so happens, domain squatting is a legal term and it refers to buying the domain of a registered trademark just to sell it to the owner of the trademark. It doesn't even have a good resolution rate either.
Because of exorbitant price set by the registry. After the apps boom, domain name has lost half of it’s value. And, rest was messed up by the new TLDs.
I strongly believe if there was original gTLDs and ccTLDs, internet would be a better place.
This sounds like a good thing though. The high price makes squatting unviable so domains are left unregistered and available for someone who will actually use them.
All the new TLDs removed scarcity from the system which didn’t provide any value.
