A big company has .net, but not .com

[d_lirious]

Hi, I was just looking around for domain names, and I came accross one that was registered as a .net, but not .com . So I wondered why. I still dont know why.

The Registrant in whois for the .net came up as a big well known company. Why wouldn't they register the .com? They only have the .net . Should I scoop up the .com? Its not a trademark name, its not their companies name, they just bought it.

What should i do? What would you do?

Thanks

[willybfriendly]

Do you have any use for the name? If not, why buy it. If so, why not buy it?

If you only use for it is to hope to sell it, I have to wonder if it would be worth the trouble.

[Hunter]

What should i do? What would you do?

I propose a simple two step process that has served me well my entire life:

1. I would first decide what I wanted to do.
2. Then I would do it.

[thatmtnman]

Actually they probably have the Trade Name via 'construction', and if so, you might find yourself at the end of a very pointed letter from their lawyers.

Others here have wisely wrote that if 'you need it why not, and if you don't need it, why bother'. One thing to think about even if you do need it...if the other company has established 'brand' in the name, then you will be fighting an uphill battle in promoting your version of the url. Might be better to find a unique name.

My thoughts anyway. Best of luck.

[EliteWeb]

buy the .com and play innocent say ya came up with it one night when you were searching -- if .com was available then why wouldnt .net or .org you just want .com :D

[CHC]

Virtually no company is ever going to register the .net flavour of a domain if the .com is available. Chances are that the .com was in fact registered when the company wanted to register their domain name and so registered the .net as a consolation prize. The .com has since lapsed and is now sitting there waiting to be registered again.

Register the .com immediately and offer sell it to them for a reasonable price that will not tempt them to UDRP you. We do this all the time and it is a perfectly honourable way to do business providing you don't ask for silly sums of money. If you ask them for $5,000 they will probably sue, if you ask for $500 you will have made several thousand percent markup on your investment and they will be very pleased with their purchase, everyone's happy apart from the Intellectual Property Lawyer who gets nothing from the deal! :)

[d_lirious]

thank you all for your comments, Umm, theres two sides of the coin here. A special thanks to Hunter, I'll take that into consideration, lol.

[Filipe]

I was just discussing this with a friend the other day.

Nowadays, a .COM is the way to go. Purists however might remember the days when there was a reason you would get a .NET over .COM or a .ORG, or whatever. They were each supposed to categorize various types of sites by their TLD classification. You could depend that a .COM was selling something, a .ORG was an organization of some kind, and a .NET was a network of some kind.

[A_Web_Guy]

I have the .com to several companies' .net domain. It is amazing that this could ever slip by somebody with a brain, but it happens.

One example is a start-up telcom with a .net and even on their site it gives a .com address for email. I get a ton of email intended for this company, and I just file it all away for the day when I sell them the .com. :-)

In the meantime, I enjoy the extra traffic being directed to my sites ... especially when it is a competitor.

[axisoftime]

I propose a simple two step process that has served me well my entire life:

1. I would first decide what I wanted to do.
2. Then I would do it.

LOL... Hunter the wise.

[JayC]

a .NET was a network of some kind.

Or an Internet-related service or business. Plenty of ISPs and the like used to choose the .net TLD over .com.