Ask HN: Is Godaddy Running a Scam?

I recommend using a cheaper, better service that includes free whois privacy by default such as Dynadot.

> it never worked.

That's not strictly true. I used it a long while ago on a vanity domain just to see if it would work. It did. They snagged the domain for me.

It started as Jomax Technologies, I believe.

I’ve always been of the belief that it was intended as GodAddy but the owner backed off of this as it seemed too egotistical, narcissistic, or blasphemous.

Global consensus on naming is pretty valuable. Nobody big is going to use an alternate root, especially an alternate root that potentially conflicts with the ICANN root.

There have been alternate roots, with alternate TLDs, but adoption is nearly zero. .onion works a little bit because it's part of TOR. I'm not convinced .eth works, but maybe it's somewhat viable???

For everything else, a mediocre domain name can usually be found at low cost, and if it's too much, there are many domains that offer free subdomains, although you might not like the neighborhood.

alternative roots exist but they will not be taken seriously by operating system vendors (for damned good reasons that are touched on by RFC 2826 - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2826).

You're free to use alternative roots. This doesn't quite address the structure of domain registration (the ICANN regime, perhaps?) because that's a different thing altogether, but kind of related. kind of.

I personally do not want to live in a world where there are competing roots. You would have massive fragmentation, confusion, poisoning, spoofing, severe trust issues. It's not going to happen.

EDIT: oh shit, it actually is happening. sad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Internet_Law

Anyone can set up a DNS provider, browsers make it easy to specify an alternate IP address. A pihole for instance has a list of domains it black holes to provide ad blocking etc, NSA provides “Protective DNS” to government contractors that refuses to resolve known malicious domains (via Akamai Govshield [0]), trick is getting anyone to use it. You’re not wrong about entrenchment being the main factor but hey, it ain’t called a network effect for nothin’ !

[0] https://www.nsa.gov/About/Cybersecurity-Collaboration-Center...

I don't know if they still do it. But there were so many similar stories in the past. That's why I adopted domain checks using whois/rdap before registering. Their search interface is used only for price comparison using bogus second level domains.

I look up potential domains from ICANN for fear of getting the domain sniped: https://lookup.icann.org/en

I'm not actually sure that they are not involved in sniping, or even that others are involved. But it's my best bet on it.

> They'll buy it out from under you if it generates enough attention.

Is there actually evidence of this happening? I always thought this was an urban legend.

I think it is not related to domain privacy. More I dig, it seems like it is a different entity somehow related to Godaddy, where in they are acting as a broker as well as seller. This kind of behavior might be fraudulent in other industries but apparently it is not in domain marketplace.

We think GD owns the domain. If they are advice a price, and that price was the bid price, isn't it funny that they are rejecting our bid to somehow indicate that we should pay more.

Thats the scam. They are acting both as broker and seller without transparently revealing the relationship.

It is like, you go to buy a house, the broker says the advertised price is 2 million, i recommend paying 3.2 million and then you realise the broker was the owner of the house.