Andy Sweet

There’s some gathering noise right now about Network Solutions automatically registering .com’s that are searched using their domain availability check on their site. Do a search for a domain and it’s immediately registered by them. If you decide not to purchase it right then, well, they own it.

I checked with IJustAteAHamSandwich.com. It was available. I immediately went to check the whois on it and it’s now registered and resolving to netsol’s name servers.

Registrant:
This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US

Domain Name: IJUSTATEAHAMSANDWICH.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC
13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300
HERNDON, VA 20171
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620

Record expires on 08-Jan-2009.
Record created on 08-Jan-2008.
Database last updated on 8-Jan-2008 13:52:37 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

ns1.reserveddomainname.com 205.178.190.55
ns2.reserveddomainname.com 205.178.189.55

What does this mean? These are scenarios if the domain isn’t bought upon that initial search:

1. At the very least they’ve locked out other registrar’s from being able to provide registration services

2. What’s to prevent them from holding it back for a higher price if I came back tomorrow and tried to register it?

3. They can hold it for a couple of days and ‘taste’ it to see if it actually gets any traffic and decide to keep it for its parking value.

4.  Perhaps they’re doing this to actually protect those consumers that don’t do immediate purchases and keep others from swooping in and registering.

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