The Fascinating World of Domains

Pete Millspaugh has a lovely article over on WIRED that peers into the world of domains. (If you’re as interested in the esoteric details of domains as I am, follow Pete’s writing at Dot Com Press.) You should just read the article, but here are a few things that stood out to me. The .com Registry Did you know who the registry for .com is? I didn’t. The registry that owns .com, Verisign, makes a billion and a half dollars every year just by keeping the lights on. To Verisign’s credit, the lights never go out: It reports 100 percent uptime over the past 28 years. It’s a pretty slick business model, watching over a database of words and collecting annual renewal fees. Warren Buffett thought so too, investing in Verisign in 2012, when its stock price was about one-eighth what it is today. Why is it simultaneously surprising and not surprising that the company running .com makes billions and has 100% uptime over almost three decades? Maybe GitHub should reach out for some advice, lol.…