If you've ever set up a website, you'll know that buying a domain name can be a confusing (and sometimes expensive) experience.
You'll also have probably come across GoDaddy — the biggest domain name registrar in the world.
GoDaddy Go
Domain names are actually registered and controlled by a non-profit organization called ICANN. GoDaddy's business, and that of other domain name registrars, is registering your domain name with ICANN and then helping you actually host your site. And business has been steadily booming. This week GoDaddy revealed it was on track to do almost $3.8bn in revenue this year.
Are there any websites left?
There aren't many sensible sounding ".com" names left, and that's partly because of "domain parking". Some opportunistic folks realized early on that the internet was probably going to be around for a while, and that certain domain names would probably become pretty valuable one day.
Snapping up available domains has become a whole market in itself - and there have been some big sales. Elon Musk coughed up $11m for "Tesla.com". Toys 'R' Us spent $5.1m on "Toys.com", and in 2019 "Voice.com" went for a record $30m.
Luckily, ".com" is just one of hundreds of what are called "top-level domains". We actually use www.chartr.co (no "m"), and you've probably seen lots of others like ".io", ".info", ".org", ".net" or country specific top-level domains like ".co.uk". So we aren't about to run out of websites any time soon.
