The Nine Billion Names of Us

I was just sending an email and as I thought about the domain name I was mailing, it struck me that the need to develop a unique domain name for every single business is similar to what I imagine took place, at some point in human history, with each person's name.

Before there were cities, people lived in farmsteads, traveled with nomadic tribes or maybe lived in villages. In many (maybe most) cases, each person was known by just a first name. Over time, there might be more than one person with the same name in the group, so the same-named people would be distinguished by where they lived, who their father or mother was, if they had black or red hair, or their occupation. Eventually, these became last names or family names.

I seem to recall that in Japan last names were a relatively recent arrival, possibly as recent as the 19th century, and were all adopted over a short period by government decree.

That's not too different from the domain name grab of the last decade and a half. I remember reading a Time magazine article, probably in the mid-90s, about how huge corporations such as McDonald's had not yet secured the obvious domain names for their companies. (Of course, companies like McDonald's probably ended up paying off a domain name squatter and got the name they wanted anyway. No need to rush when you've got deep pockets.)

The illustration at right illustrates that there is actually an "aftermarket" for domain names, and there are even brokers who facilitate purchasing names from "domain name portfolios" (the polite term for domain name squatters).

Imagine if we all had to purchase the names we wanted for our children. And we had to pay extra to get the one we wanted if some person -- who didn't actually even have a child -- bought it first so they could extort money out of someone else who might want the name. And that instead of it being considered extortion, it was instead a legitimate business.

Welcome to the age of the interweb.