Domain Name Greed

So I did a little more research into the gottlieb.* domain names. I had considered something along those lines before ending up with malkier.com since all the appropriate gottlieb stuff was taken. Most are held by legitimate parties (ie people/businesses with the name gottlieb), but gottlieb.net is actually being squatted on by a rather shifting looking domain service, buydomains.com. Turns out these scumbags run around buying up domains with the hopes that someone would buy them for a pretty penny. For example, when I checked out their “request price” form, by submitting the form you are agreeing that you would be willing to spend at least $1k on the domain and possibly well over $10k. Not sure quite what that means (aside from the fact that they’re doing their best to milk businesses for all their worth) since you’re not agreeing to actually buy it if it’s at their $1k minimum.

After googling a bit, I see that this place is even scummier than all that. Turns out if you search for available domain names through their site, they’ll promptly buy up everything you search for in the hopes that you’ll buy it off them. They’ll also automatically jack up the price once anyone’s expressed any interest in a particular domain. Stinky buggers! But who knows, I may one day be able to snag that domain if they don’t renew it when it expires…