The matching dot .com domains of common words, or geographical terms are by default very valuable.
These domains can sell for tens, hundreds or millions of dollars, as past sales have shown.
Generic domains retain type-in traffic, despite the onslaught of Facebook and how Google handles domain names in recent years.
But are such strong cards in danger of becoming obsolete?
Here’s an example.
Domains in danger. Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash
Two recent events might endanger Straws.com and Austin.com, and although we aren’t attempting to be overly pessimistic, we are raising our concerns regardless.
Straws have been battled left and right these days, due to the alleged destruction they cause to the environment. According to sources that can’t be verified, 500 million straws are consumed daily in the US alone.
The majority of this type of trash ends up in landfills, but some make its way to waterways, eventually leading to the sea, where they can endanger life.
So currently, there is a global push to eliminate plastic straws, and an equal push to substitute them with straws made out of metal or other materials that can be recycled.
In that sense, we are confident that the domain Straws.com is safe.
The case of Austin.com is also very interesting, and we’d like to thank our regular contributor, Dale, for the link.
Apparently, the city of Austin is under pressure to rename itself, and it has started by renaming streets that bear the name of its founder, Stephen F. Austin.
The reason: he was a defender of slavery, calling freed slaves “vagabonds, a nuisance and a menace.”
From a technical standpoint, however, such large city renaming would require tens of millions of dollars to facilitate. It can’t just be erased from the map due to a committee!
It seems that Austin.com is safe as well, for now.
