Location, Location, Location
from Spring 1999
by Brian Clark
It’s the 1890s land rush all over again: the scurry to open up for business on the Internet. If your management is still dawdling, give it a swift kick. U.S. companies did $43 billion in business over the Web in 1998, and the figure will exceed $1 trillion by 2003, predicts Forrester Research.
But time is running out to lock up a domain name—the . (as in dot) com address that most customers first look for when they go shopping. Even though the number of possible .coms is virtually limitless, the number of word combinations that identify your company’s name, brand, or product, is not. Choices are limited on .net and .org, too. Network Solutions, the Herndon, Virginia company that oversees the registration process, says domain names are being snapped up at the rate of 170,000 a month.
Wait too long to register, and others can grab your name. For example, Toyota.com transports you to the carmaker’s electronic showroom, but type in Nissan.com and you’ll end up at a North Carolina computer company. You may have to dig deep to get your name back. Last year Compaq paid a reported $3 million to Alta Vista Technology to secure the domain rights to “AltaVista,” already the name of Compaq’s search engine.
