Back in the 90s, it was a good thing to have your own dot com domain. But that isn’t good enough for some companies, and over the summer ICANN made it possible for you to purchase your own global top level domain (gTLD) for the mere sum of at least $185,000. Now we have dotFamilyName getting into the action and promising your own gTLD for “as little as $500,000” for your family, to provide the ultimate cachet for the ultra-wealthy. Yes, you read that right. Half a million can buy you a lot of domains that cost at best $30 a year.
When I got the press release today, I first thought it was a joke. But no, this company really thinks it has a business model here. “Only” 1000 gTLDs will be created, and only after filing a 200-page application.
Is this the “apex of the Internet” or the most exclusive or unique luxury digital item you can think of? Perhaps not, but it certainly the most ridiculous. The company promises “a state of the art security system for your personal reputation.” Harumph. We’ll see how long it takes before one of their gTLD domains gets hit by a denial of service attack.
But if any of you want to sponsor a .strom gTLD, you know where to find me in the rest of cyberspace that the common folk hang out in. (And no, I am not talking about AOL.)
