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by TheGrumpyBrit 3499 days ago
I was keeping a close eye on .family for quite a while - I'm getting married next year, so mysurname.family would have been a good domain to have both for wedding planning and personal email accounts.

When it finally came out, I eagerly went to my favourite registrar to try and buy it, and found that it's listed at over £1000. It's not a particularly common name either. Out of interest, I tried a few other surnames off the top of my head, and it seems that pretty much any domain that could be somebody's surname has been bumped up massively.

Of course, they have every right to do that, but the people buying these domains are individuals - very few of these domains are ever going to have a business use. To me, it looks like they've done nothing more than price themselves out of the whole point of their TLD.

Instead, I'm going to wait out the expiry of the .com, which isn't being squatted as such, but it is owned by a company for a single software product of theirs which looks like it was written in the 90s and requires you to send a cheque if you want to buy it. The last update was helpfully reminding visitors that the app wouldn't be compatible with the upcoming OS X Lion. One day, they'll stop renewing that domain...my time will come.

1 comments

My family name is $20/year!! Now I need to decide if it's worth supporting this cartel...