from Hacker News

The Value of Milk.com

by i_am_a_squirrel on 7/23/24, 2:14 AM with 76 comments

• by lolinder on 7/23/24, 3:20 AM

  There are a lot of people commenting assuming that this guy actually wants to sell the domain for $10 million some day. I don't read this that way at all— it sounds to me like he's very content owning the domain but has set a really high number for which he'd realistically be unable to say no and publicized that number to try to get people to stop contacting him.

  Unlike domain squatters he's actually using this domain actively, with an update this year. This is a charming and fun bit of the early internet that's still maintained and has a silly anti-sales pitch for the domain name to try to stem the flood of emails, not a greedy speculator sitting on a good property to maybe earn a profit.

• by joegibbs on 7/23/24, 3:35 AM

  I don't think that domains are worth nearly as much as they were 15-25 years ago. Back at the start of the web a lot of people would go to sites by typing in the URL directly, which made it worth something to have the perfect domain for your business sector - people heard the name of the brand and went to [whatever].com. Since search engines took off, most people would go to Google first and then type in the brand. Also, most .com domains got taken off the market, and people started to realise that you don't need a perfect domain, it can be a bit off. Valve's Steam is the biggest PC game store in the world, and it's still on store.steampowered.com, not steam.com. Now, domains are more like vanity licence plates or NFTs.

  The most expensive domain sale was CarInsurance.com for about $50m, and that was back in 2010, even though the tech sector has grown so much since then.

  Maybe in the future they'll make a comeback with how much worse Google has been getting - who knows?

• by teractiveodular on 7/23/24, 3:13 AM

  Don't miss his responses to random misguided people:

  https://milk.com/experiments/

• by webprofusion on 7/23/24, 3:01 AM

  The problem here is nobody milk-related cares and it would most likely get bought by a VC funded startup and become the name of some sort of AI js bundler tool.

• by Reubend on 7/23/24, 3:09 AM

  The owner is dreaming if they think that domain is worth $10 million. But that's fine, because they like the name, and there's no reason to sell it for a number they're not happy for.

  Personally, I wish we had more TLDs. Many of the most useful ones are expensive because of rent seeking companies that became the main registrar for them.

• by ToucanLoucan on 7/23/24, 3:02 AM

  Fun fact. I approached a domain squatter for my name as a domain name (obviously not going to provide it) ending in a .com. I asked out of curiosity what they wanted. They were talking on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  Mind you, my name isn't... uncommon, but it's not common either, and this was a firstlast.com variety. I looked through the web archive and could see the domain had literally not ever had a website, since it was originally registered in 1995.

  Now, I wasn't expecting to get it for $15 a year like a hover subscription, but still. 6 figures of value based on what?

• by bruce511 on 7/23/24, 3:14 AM

  I notice he mentions the -revenues- of the milk boards as justification for his price.

  But revenues are not the same as "discretional income". I'm guessing most of their costs are fixed. And I'm guessing their variable-cost departments would be less keen on sacrificing 10 mil on a "vanity domain".

• by ChrisArchitect on 7/23/24, 2:31 AM

  Some previous discussions with its various titles:

  I Got Milk.com (2020)

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23591357

  Not for Sale (2013)

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5181284

• by bruce511 on 7/23/24, 3:25 AM

  Not to be morbid, but I wonder what will happen to the domain when he dies. And more generally what happens to this sort of domain going forward.

  Basically the domain becomes part of the estate, but its super easy for it just to expire and be claimed by either a legit company or more likely a professional squatter. It'll then go on the market for a "fair" price (which I guess is < 10 mil). The estate gets nothing.

  Or, knowing the value, the executor / heirs bother to renew the domain and seek a buyer. Which again < 10 mil, cause presumably they just want to sell it. The 10mil anchor may be a psychological hindrance there; if the real value is say 100k, it's going to sound a LOT less than 10 mil. But frankly we know it's-not- worth 10 mil.

  My heirs would have no idea what domains I own, how to renew them, or if they're worth any money. (Hint - they're worth nothing.) But if you own a domain that does have value, you might want to make an information pack about it and stash that with your important "when I die" papers.

• by jameslk on 7/23/24, 2:57 AM

  From a negotiation perspective, it seems the domain owner has set an upper limit to how much they could make from the domain.

• by whalesalad on 7/23/24, 3:15 AM

  The domain is worthless, unless you manage to transform it into a successful business. No one is direct navigating to milk.com.

• by Dig1t on 7/23/24, 3:05 AM

  It is the exact same situation with beer.com

  Their presentation is a little better though.

• by klipt on 7/23/24, 3:06 AM

  Per Henry George we should tax this kind of speculation and rent seeking, by taxing things like land and internet domains.

  We could use the money to reduce our national debt, or pay for things like healthcare and education.