YC startups are abandoning .com(www.orangecrumbs.com)
34 pointsby oyster1435 hours ago16 comments
  • vlucas3 hours ago
    > YC startups are abandoning .com

    They are not "abandoning" .com domains. They are just really hard to find available or cheap enough to buy, so they launch with something else instead!

    .com will always be king

    • manueltgomes3 hours ago
      Bingo. either you bough a .com a while ago or you have to pay a lot.

      A while ago we had the .ly domains. Now .ai. Things change depending on "fashion" if you can call it that.

      • DanielHB3 hours ago
        Oh god my company just switched to .io and that was a huge PITA. I hope we don't go .ai...
        • robin_reala3 hours ago
          You just switched to .io knowing that it might be decommissioned in the not-too-distant future?
          • computomatic3 hours ago
            Perhaps they finally finished their migration off .su
          • applfanboysbgon3 hours ago
            It would shock me if that domain were actually allowed to be killed off by pure bureaucracy. I would like to believe that at some point bureaucracy must give way to concerns for the humans it serves, and if nothing else there is enough money involved with the industry that uses it that they'll probably be able to lobby effectively, one way or another.
    • khy3 hours ago
      Nobody goes there anymore, its too crowded.
    • charlieyu13 hours ago
      Maybe. Still wild to find startups getting millions can’t afford to buy a .com domain
      • jeffyaw3 hours ago
        it's not that they can't afford to buy one. it's that they're not available. and now a lot of other tlds have gained traction so it's now reasonable to consider others.
        • layer83 hours ago
          I would assume that for most foo.ai domains, foo-ai.com would also be available. So it’s more about naming preferences, and sometimes lack of imagination for coming up with an available name.
          • ksbd-pls-finish16 minutes ago
            foo-ai.com looks like a phishing domain targeting foo.ai
      • xhkkffbf3 hours ago
        The squatters really jack up the prices. Yet somehow they pay pennies to squat on domains for decades. It's really a scandal.
  • CodesInChaos3 hours ago
    Which gTLDs are reliable besides the classics (com, net, org,...)? By that I mean that the TLD owner won't screw you over a few years from now, for example by raising prices?

    I kind of like the idea to use .com for the marketing site, and .app for the actual web-app.

  • Grombobulous3 hours ago
    If you take .ai out of it, .com is still dominant.
    • mojuba3 hours ago
      Exactly, and nothing will ever match the "prestige" of .com

      .ai is also kind of cool right now but it will probably lose its appeal after some years when everything will become AI and the world will get tired of the term.

      But .com is still at the top of the food chain. If you can survive for a few years, raise your series A/B, you will likely have enough money to acquire your sexy single-word .com name.

      • charlieyu13 hours ago
        Just found out the great ol’ command.com is taken by somebody random
        • dhosek3 hours ago
          Many of the “good” simple names were grabbed by folks when registration was free in th 90s.

          I’m still annoyed that thanks to a missed payment, I lost quixote.com.

  • the__alchemist3 hours ago
    Is non .com/.org, and hyphens still haram? I registered a new domain last week; I went with non-hyphenated .com. More verbose than ideal, but I chose based on my previous understanding.

    I remember .ly was a thing for a while, then the tech companies would do *ly.com instead.

  • tosh3 hours ago
    .com is evergreen but it's more and more difficult to get good .com names

    I wouldn't call this 'abandoning .com' though

    it's basically still .com dominated with a good chunk .ai

    and I guess the ones with good .com are keeping the .com

  • codegeek3 hours ago
    .ai is the new .io but nothing will beat .com. Even Paul Graham has said that.
    • nadis3 hours ago
      Lest we forget, the PG essay: https://paulgraham.com/name.html
      • closetheloopdev3 hours ago
        While reading the essay, I could not stop thinking about the literal "X" company which was formerly known as Twitter :D. It's like X is no longer a variable but a constant.
  • FlamingMoe3 hours ago
    They will certainly buy the .com once they reach a certain level of stability.
  • Cider99863 hours ago
    .st is cool because they allow US-legal content and it's pretty cheap. I don't think it will be popular with companies but I like it for personal sites.
  • CollinEMac3 hours ago
    I thought .dev and .app would be more popular actually. The rapid increase in .ai makes sense though.
    • 4051261213 hours ago
      From personal experience .dev is a little weird. For one thing its on the HSTS preload list, enforcing https. You cannot make a http://... request to a .dev domain from most browsers. I found this out the hard way after trying to use .dev for... development.
      • CodesInChaos3 hours ago
        I understand using http on localhost and in some cases local domains accessible within the LAN. But I don't see much point in using http for public domains, especially since browsers apply many restrictions to insecure origins (http://*.localhost is considered secure).
      • xhkkffbf3 hours ago
        That's a deal breaker for me. Who has the time to set up full crypto protocols when just noodling around?
  • cma3 hours ago
    "A recent YC startup spent 250k on a domain. I was slightly shocked. But when I asked how much they raised after YC, the answer was 6.5m. So 1/26 of their round. This is the time we live in; one shocking number counterbalances the other."

    https://x.com/paulg/status/2083628660708561075

    Was that a .xyz?

  • cakbeslik3 hours ago
    I never thought domains are actually uper important for startups. .com was always cool, then ther was an .io madness, never liked it, still go with .com or .co
  • jdw643 hours ago
    .com — in RFC 920, it originally meant 'commercial.' But come to think of it, a lot of recent startups seem to be selling things that aren't really commercial at all. So maybe they're actually heading in the right direction.
  • rvz3 hours ago
    At the end of the day, .com will still remain the most valuable and all startups will grow up into buying a .com
    • benatkin3 hours ago
      Counter-example: Alphabet doesn't have alphabet.com
      • CodesInChaos3 hours ago
        They have google.com, which is the brand they use towards customers. The Alphabet brand is little more than a stock ticker.
      • newleaf2 hours ago
        They use abc.xyz though, which is fun at least.
      • SJMG3 hours ago
        They have abc.xyz
      • philipwhiuk3 hours ago
        Counter-counter point: It's not really used in branding either by any of the child companies. So they don't need it.
      • rvz3 hours ago
        Who ever has alphabet.com will be able to sell it for 7 figures anyway, which is the point.
        • ggcr2 hours ago
          TIL that alphabet.com belongs to BMW group
  • mtxeat2 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • openrockets2 hours ago
    [dead]
  • thm3 hours ago
    Anything other than a .com for a commercial site screams gimmick and immediately strips away most of its credibility. Go .com or go home.
    • jeffyaw3 hours ago
      this sounds like you're stuck in 2010.
      • gumby3 hours ago
        Nope: it surprised me too, but we did a small survey and unless you’re a nerd, anything not ending in either com or your own nation’s TLD structure is considered dodgy and/or hard to type (.co being a notorious case — people type .com instead).

        This is mitigated slightly by the fact that people don’t use URIs much any more and even if they do they usually type something into a search bar or chat bot which DWIMs what they typed anyway.