Times Insider shares historic insights from The New York Times. In this article, John Markoff, who covered technology for The Times for 28 years before retiring last month, continues to rue the paper’s 1995 choice of nytimes.com over his own nyt.com: “Do you have any idea what a three-letter domain is worth these days?”
I love stories like this.
You touch a link on yor phone and are greeted with an nginx gateway 502 error.
“Do you have any idea what a three-letter domain is worth these days?”
Uhh, no, but after I STFW I do. About $19,000 in 2015. That is a little less than I thought, actually.
http://www.3character.com/price-guide.html
Before the recession, I mean, whatever that was, a whole lot more:
http://domainnamewire.com/2007/05/31/how-much-is-a-three-letter-dom…
“Do you have any idea what a three-letter domain is worth these days?”
What about this memorable one for Punchbowl Boys High:
http://www.punchbowlb-h.schools.nsw.edu.au
Edited 2017-03-10 02:23 UTC
It’s more about perceived worth than actual value. A three-letter domain such as nyt(dot)com would probably sell for far more than the average price, because of its potential for misdirecting unsuspecting visitors to a place they weren’t intending to go. This is a favored trick of malware distributors, in fact, and happens with slightly misspelled versions of high-profile domains regardless of length. I’d guess this one would command a high price indeed, even today, for its sheer potential.
Much of it’s been skewed by the recent high demand out of China for short domain names:
https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/12/china-making-domain-name-history/
https://qz.com/581248/chinas-latest-investment-craze-is-short-domain…
http://domainnamewire.com/2016/04/20/china-giveth-china-can-taketh-…
I’ve seen a few analyses of why that’s happening, but the most plausible explanation seems to be that short domains are seen in China as a good way to store/move money out of the country, because the Chinese government has no control over it (since domain sales & the ownership details can be kept private).