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Hokkaido

Who Owns Hokkai.do?

Sometimes when I’m bored, I’ll plug interesting word combinations into register.com and see what domain names are available. A while back I was intrigued by the two character top-level domains (TLDs) available from other countries such as .ly, .gl and .it (i.e. bit.ly, goo.gl, redd.it). I like the simplicity of a short, clean domain name and these do that.  So I tried to create domains that would fit with the preexisting TLD.

And of course I thought “wow, wouldn’t hokkai.do be great?” So I searched it. It turns out that .do is the TLD of the Dominican Republic, and that hokkai.do is taken.  But I was disappointed when I visited it.  There is nothing other than some text that says “Welcome to Hokkaido! Soon, my pretties…”  It’s been like that for more than six months since I checked it.

.DO domains aren’t cheap – one like this costs $125 for a two-year registration.  Someone’s paying $60 per year to sit on the hokkai.do domain name, linking to nothing and showing nothing. It seems a waste of a beautiful and sexy domain that if the Hokkaido Government decided to make use of, would give them some major street cred with internet-savvy peeps.

Who owns you, hokkai.do?

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