On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Rowe, Joshua wrote:

> Entrepreneur Tim Lee registered 'Cool.com' for nothing five years ago -- but
> recently got an offer for the domain name worth up to $38 million.
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2495603,00.html
> 
> 

You will have noticed that there are private operators
trying to position the country domains as suitable tld's 
for other things. The latest I saw was the .mp

http://www.marketplace.mp/

The .mp actually stands for Marianas Pacific... but the
company marketing it are saying it stands for "Market
Place". I suspect ICANN will stop this practice soon
(ie private groups hijacking a country code) or at
the very least ensuring the structure is .com.mp
or similar and not mydomain.mp as is the case now.

It was allocated as a country code and so I would
consider that this is the purpose it should be used for,
not for some defacto generic category.

That aside I think the horse has bolted as far
as .com being the domain that people will be prepared
to pay big money for.

Does anyone know how .au.com is going?

doug