There are a lot of people commenting assuming that this guy actually wants to sell the domain for $10 million some day. I don't read this that way at all— it sounds to me like he's very content owning the domain but has set a really high number for which he'd realistically be unable to say no and publicized that number to try to get people to stop contacting him.
Unlike domain squatters he's actually using this domain actively, with an update this year. This is a charming and fun bit of the early internet that's still maintained and has a silly anti-sales pitch for the domain name to try to stem the flood of emails, not a greedy speculator sitting on a good property to maybe earn a profit.
I don't think that domains are worth nearly as much as they were 15-25 years ago. Back at the start of the web a lot of people would go to sites by typing in the URL directly, which made it worth something to have the perfect domain for your business sector - people heard the name of the brand and went to [whatever].com. Since search engines took off, most people would go to Google first and then type in the brand. Also, most .com domains got taken off the market, and people started to realise that you don't need a perfect domain, it can be a bit off. Valve's Steam is the biggest PC game store in the world, and it's still on store.steampowered.com, not steam.com. Now, domains are more like vanity licence plates or NFTs.
The most expensive domain sale was CarInsurance.com for about $50m, and that was back in 2010, even though the tech sector has grown so much since then.
Maybe in the future they'll make a comeback with how much worse Google has been getting - who knows?
I agree it’s not as important. There have still been some rather high .com sales though… Ai.com sold for 11M recently. Now personally, I have never accessed ChatGPT through that domain and never seen it even linked from that.
I feel like the rise of advertising malware attacks (where someone places a google ad on a domain name they don’t own, so that people searching for that site directly are tricked into clicking on the malware ad instead) is bringing back typing domains directly. I know I have personally started avoiding using google search as my dns.
People indeed are using search engines (i.e. Google) to navigate to domains (I saw even people who entered the fqdn into Google only to see it as the third/fourth link after the ads) however as Google indeed is the ruler of souls (I saw also people not finding the domain in the links, despite having it entered into google) I dare say whole world business depends on search engines (i.e. google) and this must stop.
The problem here is nobody milk-related cares and it would most likely get bought by a VC funded startup and become the name of some sort of AI js bundler tool.
That's what I was thinking. I've never really thought 'hey I like milk, I should check out the website', and I'd be surprised if anybody does.
A boutique brand probably wants their name everywhere, including the domain. So that just leaves the milk industry at whole, which I imagine doesn't care that much, either.
At least with the vidalia onion guy, he was able to do something with it. Milk is super perishable, hard to transport, and typically pretty regional, so that's probably out too.
I have a feeling this guy will end up dying owning a domain he made -$800 or so dollars on, and the registrar will auction it off for a fraction of his perceived value.
The owner is dreaming if they think that domain is worth $10 million. But that's fine, because they like the name, and there's no reason to sell it for a number they're not happy for.
Personally, I wish we had more TLDs. Many of the most useful ones are expensive because of rent seeking companies that became the main registrar for them.
>The owner is dreaming if they think that domain is worth $10 million.
I think you're taking that a weeeeee bit too seriously. One gets the sense that they just like having the domain and don't really care about the offers. Maybe he would if it's "high enough", sure, but much of this reads tongue-in-cheek.
Sony offered Marvel 5 billion for Spider Man. Is it worth it? Probs not. But now Marvel would stop wasting time sending offers. It's the piss off price.
The domain owner is getting tons of offers for their domain and its a waste of their time. Now, slap $10 million, make it large and visible. So everyone can just go away. It's strategically better to put some high value to filter out everyone.
Fun fact. I approached a domain squatter for my name as a domain name (obviously not going to provide it) ending in a .com. I asked out of curiosity what they wanted. They were talking on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mind you, my name isn't... uncommon, but it's not common either, and this was a firstlast.com variety. I looked through the web archive and could see the domain had literally not ever had a website, since it was originally registered in 1995.
Now, I wasn't expecting to get it for $15 a year like a hover subscription, but still. 6 figures of value based on what?
I suspect its like the New York City landlord conundrum; the squatter holds out for years pricing their listings at way more than their worth, hoping that a whale will come along one day and cover their losses by purchasing a single domain/property.
I notice he mentions the -revenues- of the milk boards as justification for his price.
But revenues are not the same as "discretional income". I'm guessing most of their costs are fixed. And I'm guessing their variable-cost departments would be less keen on sacrificing 10 mil on a "vanity domain".
Also, just because a potential buyer has the money doesn't mean he/she is gonna automatically pay what you're asking. I can try to sell my 2000 Nissan Frontier pickup truck for $50K, and a lot of people have $50K, but that doesn't mean anyone is actually gonna give me that much.
(Note: if you want a sweet 2000 Nissan Frontier pickup truck, I can sell you mine for, say, $10K. It's only got ~300K miles on it. And it's worth $50K!)
Not to be morbid, but I wonder what will happen to the domain when he dies. And more generally what happens to this sort of domain going forward.
Basically the domain becomes part of the estate, but its super easy for it just to expire and be claimed by either a legit company or more likely a professional squatter. It'll then go on the market for a "fair" price (which I guess is < 10 mil). The estate gets nothing.
Or, knowing the value, the executor / heirs bother to renew the domain and seek a buyer. Which again < 10 mil, cause presumably they just want to sell it. The 10mil anchor may be a psychological hindrance there; if the real value is say 100k, it's going to sound a LOT less than 10 mil. But frankly we know it's-not- worth 10 mil.
My heirs would have no idea what domains I own, how to renew them, or if they're worth any money. (Hint - they're worth nothing.) But if you own a domain that does have value, you might want to make an information pack about it and stash that with your important "when I die" papers.
Not so, if Milk.com was actually suddenly worth 50 million dollars, they would most likely receive multiple 10 million dollar offers in less than the time it would take for them to close on the first, leading to them likely moving to auction it or try listing it for a higher price.
Otherwise, the tactic of listing houses for less than the desired selling price in the name of attracting attention and relying on bidding wars to drive the price higher would never work.
Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it. If it hasn't been sold for 8 figures, and the owner is willing to sell, then it's not worth 8 figures.
When I had my ISP back in the early 90s, everyone in the office registered all those "generic" domains (along with trademarked ones too). My ex-business partner originally registered beer.com, his sister did game.com (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTuQgUe-CME), our billing manager did subway.com and someone even did wallstreet.com.
This isn't at all the same—this is just one guy who registered a domain forever ago and actually uses it for a bunch of random things [0] and doesn't really want to sell it but would if he got a good enough offer.
Beer.com is literally just a contact form advertising a whole bunch of squatted domains which all just redirect to that contact form and are all owned by an investment firm called afterTHOUGHT, Inc. There's no early internet charm, just pure capitalism waiting for a buyer.
Honestly I feel like milk.com is more valuable. Because the US milk industry is commoditized, while beer isn't. An individual beer company doesn't want beer.com, they want budweiser.com—at most, I could see a redirect. You can't sell alcohol efficiently online, and beer review sites don't make very much money.
I don’t think Georgism applies very cleanly to the DNS. It works well for land because a Georgist tax is essentially an incentive to improve the land or sell it to someone who will; it’s unclear that a tax on milk.com will improve milk.com.
In what way is he actually speculating or rent seeking? He has a real website on it — not just a placeholder — and he's got DNS MX records, so it's presumably actively used for email.
lolinder|1 year ago
Unlike domain squatters he's actually using this domain actively, with an update this year. This is a charming and fun bit of the early internet that's still maintained and has a silly anti-sales pitch for the domain name to try to stem the flood of emails, not a greedy speculator sitting on a good property to maybe earn a profit.
jjulius|1 year ago
Relax, enjoy it for what it is. I chuckled.
joegibbs|1 year ago
The most expensive domain sale was CarInsurance.com for about $50m, and that was back in 2010, even though the tech sector has grown so much since then.
Maybe in the future they'll make a comeback with how much worse Google has been getting - who knows?
x3sphere|1 year ago
cortesoft|1 year ago
p0w3n3d|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
teractiveodular|1 year ago
https://milk.com/experiments/
webprofusion|1 year ago
silisili|1 year ago
A boutique brand probably wants their name everywhere, including the domain. So that just leaves the milk industry at whole, which I imagine doesn't care that much, either.
At least with the vidalia onion guy, he was able to do something with it. Milk is super perishable, hard to transport, and typically pretty regional, so that's probably out too.
I have a feeling this guy will end up dying owning a domain he made -$800 or so dollars on, and the registrar will auction it off for a fraction of his perceived value.
bufferoverflow|1 year ago
Problem is, startups rarely have $10M to spend on a domain name. Give it a decade, one of them will probably bite.
jjulius|1 year ago
... is that there is no problem. They're just being silly.
deathanatos|1 year ago
/s … I hope.
Reubend|1 year ago
Personally, I wish we had more TLDs. Many of the most useful ones are expensive because of rent seeking companies that became the main registrar for them.
jjulius|1 year ago
I think you're taking that a weeeeee bit too seriously. One gets the sense that they just like having the domain and don't really care about the offers. Maybe he would if it's "high enough", sure, but much of this reads tongue-in-cheek.
x3sphere|1 year ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_domain_..., Beer.com sold for 7M in 2004.
langsoul-com|1 year ago
The domain owner is getting tons of offers for their domain and its a waste of their time. Now, slap $10 million, make it large and visible. So everyone can just go away. It's strategically better to put some high value to filter out everyone.
ksec|1 year ago
ToucanLoucan|1 year ago
Mind you, my name isn't... uncommon, but it's not common either, and this was a firstlast.com variety. I looked through the web archive and could see the domain had literally not ever had a website, since it was originally registered in 1995.
Now, I wasn't expecting to get it for $15 a year like a hover subscription, but still. 6 figures of value based on what?
DaSHacka|1 year ago
teractiveodular|1 year ago
See also, the VC investment model that relies on the 1% breakout success covering losses on the remaining 99%.
e40|1 year ago
bruce511|1 year ago
But revenues are not the same as "discretional income". I'm guessing most of their costs are fixed. And I'm guessing their variable-cost departments would be less keen on sacrificing 10 mil on a "vanity domain".
jimt1234|1 year ago
(Note: if you want a sweet 2000 Nissan Frontier pickup truck, I can sell you mine for, say, $10K. It's only got ~300K miles on it. And it's worth $50K!)
ChrisArchitect|1 year ago
I Got Milk.com (2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23591357
Not for Sale (2013)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5181284
bruce511|1 year ago
Basically the domain becomes part of the estate, but its super easy for it just to expire and be claimed by either a legit company or more likely a professional squatter. It'll then go on the market for a "fair" price (which I guess is < 10 mil). The estate gets nothing.
Or, knowing the value, the executor / heirs bother to renew the domain and seek a buyer. Which again < 10 mil, cause presumably they just want to sell it. The 10mil anchor may be a psychological hindrance there; if the real value is say 100k, it's going to sound a LOT less than 10 mil. But frankly we know it's-not- worth 10 mil.
My heirs would have no idea what domains I own, how to renew them, or if they're worth any money. (Hint - they're worth nothing.) But if you own a domain that does have value, you might want to make an information pack about it and stash that with your important "when I die" papers.
jameslk|1 year ago
BobaFloutist|1 year ago
Otherwise, the tactic of listing houses for less than the desired selling price in the name of attracting attention and relying on bidding wars to drive the price higher would never work.
devoutsalsa|1 year ago
whalesalad|1 year ago
Dig1t|1 year ago
Their presentation is a little better though.
cowmix|1 year ago
Those were the days.
lolinder|1 year ago
Beer.com is literally just a contact form advertising a whole bunch of squatted domains which all just redirect to that contact form and are all owned by an investment firm called afterTHOUGHT, Inc. There's no early internet charm, just pure capitalism waiting for a buyer.
[0] https://milk.com/
jlund-molfese|1 year ago
greentext|1 year ago
[deleted]
danfuzz|1 year ago
jjulius|1 year ago
klipt|1 year ago
We could use the money to reduce our national debt, or pay for things like healthcare and education.
woodruffw|1 year ago
danfuzz|1 year ago
makeitdouble|1 year ago