GoDaddy runs the root dns for .us

Wait really? I use a .us domain for personal stuff, that.. makes me want to reconsider.

Also .us domains don't have who is privacy.

Please don't keep us in suspense ... who is privacy?

They probably meant "whois privacy"[1] (without the space). Whois is basically a way to get information about a domain name (and many other stuff). Whois privacy just ensures that your address, name and other stuff is not public.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy

They were probably joking when they asked that question.

Your reply doesn't seem sarcastic, so I take it you genuinely r/whoosh'ed (that's a reference to a subreddit about situations where someone is acting clueless).

I know ;) Some people still value an explanation though.

Realistically, I don't think HN is the place for those kinds of jokes, which are best kept for reddit/twitter.

Yeah I'm increasingly seeing these reddit-style low effort jokes on here, hopefully it's transient as folks acclimatize to the culture and customs here.

Yeah I found that out when I stupidly used my real contact info, and ended up getting spammed all to hell.

WHOIS privacy isn't a registry-level service. It's a registrar-level service.

It’s both. Some domains do not allow WHOIS privacy (.us is one of them), some have it built-in, while most don’t care and registrars can fill in with fake data.

> GoDaddy runs the root dns for .us

.us is not the “root DNS” and your misidentification is muddying the waters.

.us is a TLD (Top-Level Domain) and more specifically, a ccTLD (cc = ‘Country Code’).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us

And the English Wikipedia says that its registrar is a subsidiary of GoDaddy named “Registry Services, LLC”.

The root DNS servers and registry are not run by GoDaddy or a subsidiary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server

They are operated by important entities. Not companies that release sexy commercials featuring Danica Patrick. I keep getting confused between GoDaddy and Carl’s, Jr.

I think its clear from context they mean the .us TLD, and not the root zone, since obviously it wouldn't make sense to talk about the root zone for .us.

Its also very reasonable to use the more well-known name of the parent company to describe sonething done by its subsidary.

“It’s not run by GoDaddy, but a subsidiary of GoDaddy!”

Way to be so pedantic you miss the forest for the trees.

.us is not a root name server. The root name servers are one more degree removed.

Hence 'for .us'. The trouble with this form of pedantic is that the nicer way to interpret the misunderstanding is that the pedant is ignorant either of language or the structure of dns.

"He runs the Internet routers for our company." -> "Your company doesn't run the Internet" -> wtf?

It was a clarification that GoDaddy's ability to fuck everything up isn't quite as broad as suggested.

It actually didn’t help at all. Read the part quoted again, OP specifically indicated .us, not “root zone”. The registrar for .us (GoDaddy) is in fact the “root dns for .us”

> The registrar for .us (GoDaddy) is in fact the “root dns for .us”

“root DNS” has a very specific meaning, and you’ve misused it again.

Root DNS means ‘.’ and only ‘.’ There is no other “root”. That’s why it’s called “root” to be unambiguous.

In fact, in recent history, the root name servers use their own domain for convenient forward DNS resolution: ‘root-servers.net’ GoDaddy doesn’t run this either... Surprise, surprise!

> Your company doesn't run the Internet

Yeah well as a fragment, the statement makes sense, more or less, because there’s no “term of art” being abused there in your reductio ad absurdum.

Indeed you can run your own private root DNS, if you don’t want to interact with the real Internet, but your private roots are different from your private/hidden/split-horizon TLD. Another thing GoDaddy isn’t running. Did you know that GoDaddy doesn’t run news.ycombinator.com? Not even a subsidiary!

GoDaddy doesn’t run any “root DNS”, and they never have: period, full stop. [Pun intended]

The whole point of a tree is that every node is the root of its subtree.

Exactly!

The original clarification was perfectly fine to and arguing about the correction is reply-all-unsubscribe line noise. There was confusion, it error corrected, move on.

Yet you chose to reply-all-unsubscribe line noise further. Maybe take your own advice and move on bro.

Necromancing an over two-day old thread to ask someone to move on is a bit rich lol.

Yet you still reply again! Guess you put zero value in your own advice, got it!

That's not what they said.

GoDaddy is the rot of us domains, besides being rotten culturally as well

I understood what you meant. I can understand why someone would want to clarify the terminology for those who don't know DNS well.

ICJ judges in The Hague, including Israel’s appointed judge, deemed it necessary to remind Israel to respect the Palestinians’ right to not be genocided away. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Ord...

Please don't defend Hitler on Hacker News.

>>> This block was the result of a communication error between Zoom’s domain registrar, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy Registry, which resulted in GoDaddy Registry mistakenly shutting down zoom.us domain.

That sounds like MarkMonitor is at least partly at fault here.

I mean, one person is saying what to do and the other person is doing it. And the person doing things is taking down zoom.us... Also knowing who godaddy is and what they do...

Mark Monitor have issued a correct request for the `serverUpdateProhibited`, but GoDaddy changed the code to `serverHold` instead.

100% on the GoDaddy staff.

> Mark Monitor have issued a correct request for the `serverUpdateProhibited`, but GoDaddy changed the code to `serverHold` instead.

I’m curious about where are you seeing what Mark Monitor requested? It doesn’t appear in the official status update. Is this public information formally posted somewhere we can all see?

There are countries whose ccTLD registrars are impeccably well-run and have been for decades, such as DENIC, the entity that oversees the .de ccTLD.

If you're based in Germany, I don't see a reason why you would want to avoid .de domains.

Them being subject to the pretty draconian laws of Germany is a minus for most people if they had no other reason to have to follow those laws (such as not being in Germany).

Mind ellaborating what draconian laws you are talking about?

If it's not strictly non-commercial then you have to publish your fill name and home address prominently on it. You can't say anything insulting about anyone, even if true. And you can't criticize what Israel did because it's considered antisemitism.

> If it's not strictly non-commercial then you have to publish your fill name and home address prominently on it.

Under German law, as far as I understand this is true for publications "addressed to a German audience" regardless of your domain's TLD, your server location etc.

Somebody that is based in Germany (which is what GP was recommending .de for) is usually subject to German law, due to... being in Germany.

And conversely, when not based in Germany, you'd need a proxy Administrative Contact anyway. (Registrars can probably provide that for you, but it seems like asking for trouble.)

There are definitely exceptions, and having a connection to the country in question helps, but unfortunately countries seem to enshittify in different but similar ways as old companies.

> Financially, a proper gTLD also can't raise prices unilaterally and weirdly, while if you pick a ccTLD, the country has free reign to arbitrarily change prices, delete your domain, take over your domain, etc etc.

Look into what’s happened with pricing on domains like .org and .info. They’re increasingly absurd, with the restrictions on price increases that once were there largely being removed, at the pushing of the sharks that bought the registrar. Why are these prices increasing well above inflation rate, when if anything the costs should go down over time? Why is .info now almost twice as expensive as .com?

Although the .org price caps are gone, the registry has to raise prices uniformly for all domains. They can't target popular domains for discriminatory pricing. ccTLDs can.

> They can't target popular domains for discriminatory pricing.

That's not completely accurate. Section 2.10c of the base registry agreement says the following in relation to the uniform pricing obligations:

> The foregoing requirements of this Section 2.10(c) shall not apply for (i) purposes of determining Renewal Pricing if the registrar has provided Registry Operator with documentation that demonstrates that the applicable registrant expressly agreed in its registration agreement with registrar to higher Renewal Pricing at the time of the initial registration

Most registrars have blanket statements in their registration agreement that say premium domains may be subject to higher renewal pricing. For registry premium domains, there are no contractual limits on pricing or price discrimination. AFAIK, the registries can price premium domains however they want.

You omitted key portions of that section. Here's the full quote (emphasis added):

> The foregoing requirements of this Section 2.10(c) shall not apply for (i) purposes of determining Renewal Pricing if the registrar has provided Registry Operator with documentation that demonstrates that the applicable registrant expressly agreed in its registration agreement with registrar to higher Renewal Pricing at the time of the initial registration of the domain name following clear and conspicuous disclosure of such Renewal Pricing to such registrant

Furthermore:

> The parties acknowledge that the purpose of this Section 2.10(c) is to prohibit abusive and/or discriminatory Renewal Pricing practices imposed by Registry Operator without the written consent of the applicable registrant at the time of the initial registration of the domain and this Section 2.10(c) will be interpreted broadly to prohibit such practices

Yes, premium domains can be priced higher, but the Renewal Pricing has to be "clear and conspicuous" to the registrant at the time of initial registration. Are you aware of any litigation related to this?

The exact pricing isn’t disclosed. All they do is tell you the price will be “higher”. Anyone registering a premium domain is getting higher than uniform renewal pricing, so whatever they’re doing right now is considered adequate and that’s just generic ToS in the registration agreement AFAIK.

It sounds like you think I’m being deceptive. Do you know about any registry premium domains where someone has a contractually guaranteed price?

Also, based on my own anecdotal experience, ICANN doesn’t interpret 2.10c broadly and they allow the registries to push the boundaries as much as they want.

> MarkMonitor isn't at fault here.

Yes, it is.

"Their enforcement team works with platforms to remove infringing content and can even help with legal proceedings if needed. They don't just find problems—they help solve them through their connections with major online platforms and their understanding of takedown procedures."

What you're paying for is MarkMonitor's people having the cell phone number of the guy at the operations end of whatever point in the chain screwed up. At least that was their original pitch. Now, they have a whole range of tracking services which you can get elsewhere.

GoDaddy Registry operates the .us registry. You cannot have a .us domain without their involvement. Consider whether you wanted a .com domain instead (which is operated by Verisign).

zoom.com is an audio equipment manufacturer, which was there before zoom.us.

I guess that's what happens where they had to accept substandard domain, because they were unwilling to be creative about their name.

I always assumed that Zoom reacted to security/privacy concerns about its association with China by getting a "*.us" domain that sounded very United States.

AFAICT they've used that domain since day one, so probably not.

Maybe it’s just simple word play of “Zoom us” as in call us. As opposed to “Zoom me” which might be just for one person rather than group chat.

Do English speakers pronounce .us domains as dot us instead of dot u s?

Dot yoo ess. Source: am European.

Me too: 'you ess' (British)

Noting that we British would always call our country "you kay" so .us would be derived from that. I suspect similar reasoning from Europe.

I also say 'dot you ess' and I was born in the USA.

It would only be pronounced as "uhhss" as part of a domain hack. Otherwise "you ess". Source: am from USA.

Zoomus

> zoom.com is an audio equipment manufacturer

This is false; https://zoom.com is currently used by the video chat platform.

The audio equipment manufacturer uses domain: https://zoomcorp.com/

They did buy zoom.com from someone in 2019, though, for $2M.

https://domainnamewire.com/2019/03/23/did-zoom-pay-2-million...

Interesting. I used to buy Zoom modems in the 80s-90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Telephonics), but apparently they have nothing to do with either of the other two Zoom companies mentioned here. I had occasionally wondered but never looked into it until now.

Back in the day, wasn't it either Zoom or Hayes?

Don't forget US Robotics

But the dot com domain is now owned by Zoom Communications or just Zoom (as we know it). If you type "zoom.us" in your browser, you will be redirected to https://www.zoom.com/

Incidentally, Zoom seems a terrible name for a video conferencing app - anyone know why they chose it?

Subjective, Zoom is a pretty cool name

The Wikipedia editors know, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Communications#Early_year... :

> In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City.

It cites https://vator.tv/2020-03-26-when-zoom-was-young-the-early-ye... where Jim Scheinman says:

> “I loved this fun little book as much as my kids, and hoped to use the name someday for the perfect company that embodied the same values of creativity, exploration, happiness, and trust. And the name works perfectly with a product that connects us visually to one another and that always works so fast and seamlessly.“

The reference to "Zoom City" is from an article published in 2020. It seems like a remarkably fitting ret-conning of what is probably a very boring branding decision.

What would be the point of ret-conning some other decision?

> In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City.

To save people the agony of visiting Wikipedia for themselves to check, changed from Saasbee. Which, good call.

One guess - fast video.

Added context: Zoom delivered a step change in video conferencing quality for the many, vs the few, and in a lot of ways did seem to force others to be better.

During the pandemic many people used zoom more than their cell phones.

I immediately agreed with this, but at the same time it’s not “fast” is it? It’s higher quality or more reliably, something like that. But emotionally I agree it does feel “faster”.

Fair point - it's smoother video that gives a better quality experience.

The speed of starting a call sometimes could take a bit more but once established was higher quality than the alternatives at the time.

It is a one-syllable word, easy to pronounce in many languages, quite distinct from other words and brands, and can easily be turned into a verb.

Why does that make it a good name for video in particular?

Why does it have to be -- ever "googled" something? ;-)

Cameras often have zoom lenses for close ups.

Fits great with the idea of bringing people together with video.

Verbing your nouns is a great way to lose your trademark.

When they came up with it that would be a best case scenario.

Are there any actual recent examples of this? The major examples I've always heard are solidly in the 20th century. It's not like Google has had any problem holding their trademark.

Kleenex and Xerox were both (somewhat) recently in danger of loosing theirs. They both pulled pretty big campaigns to un-verb their trademarks. Google still has a bunch of other products that people are familiar with, so they are in less danger of loosing theirs right now, but give it some time (like 50 years, not 10) and it may happen, especially if they get broken up for being a monopoly. (Which has been mentioned)

I'm usually a big proponent of longer-term corporate thinking, but deciding your name around problems you might have five decades after becoming a household name is a little much.

It’s all relative. Is “Webex” better? “Skype”? “BlueJeans”??

Fair. They are worse.

Especially Skype, which is getting shit down. In favour of Teams, which is so much worse it’s hard to describe.

That's a really fantastic typo. I know it was unintentional, but still...

We use Skype and it is worst atm. Skype freezes every minute.

BlueJeans is one of those absolutely catastrophically stupid branding decisions. There's just........ no justification. It's confusing at best, and abbreviated as BJ at worst.

Maybe after recent US events, everything will move to .ru TLD

They've had zoom.com since at least 2019 or so. It used to just be a redirect to Zoom.us though they've made a switch since then.

This is … Zombocom.

You can do anything at ZomboCom.

Anything at all.

The only limit ... is yourself.

> The whole point of paying for MarkMonitor is that they're an expensive service for valuable domains

A while ago and, out of curiosity, I did a Whois Lookup to see what big tech companies are using as their domain registrar and found that Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Netflix and Shopify are all using MarkMonitor. On the other hand Apple uses "Nom-iq Ltd. dba COM LAUDE", Meta (and its children) uses RegistrarSafe and Nvidia uses SafeNames.

> COM LAUDE

Someone had fun with that one.

RegistrarSafe is a registrar spun up by Meta for precisely the purpose of guarding their own domains and isn't open to external customers.

Many of those also run their own gTLDs, too: .apple, .google, etc

That’s interesting, Apple used to use CSC, which is the “other” big corporate registrar, competitor to MarkMonitor.

Agreed. This is a whole lot of screw ups that I would have expected from the indie company down the street, not an ICANN accredited registrar. It's pretty pathetic when it takes public pressure for the ICANN to finally start doing their goddamn job.

These big companies spend tens of millions on homegrown tooling, even their own languages and databases, but they can't assign one dev to write a domain-monitoring tool?

You are thinking like a developer. In reality that means that now they are responsible for it, if MarkMonitor messes something up they can use their relationship to all the registrars to fix the problem and MarkMonitor is on the hook in case anything goes wrong.

This is a better situation to be in than some internal tooling that failed to notify someone because it got forgotten after the developer left.

It’s one of those ‘this problem is so simple, our big corporation cannot hope to solve it’ type of problems.

Because it's cheaper and more reliable to outsource that to a company specializing in it.

If one dev had written it, how many times would that tool have failed by now? When the original dev left the company a decade ago, the tool has been transferred between teams six times, it failed a migration and the email address it used to send errors to no longer exists so nobody noticed, and it's literally gotten lost in the shuffle?

Markmonitor is much more about the people and service behind it rather than the software. To replace markmonitor you don't need a dev to write a tool. You need a dev to write a tool, and then a team of people who build relationships with everyone in the domain world and are available 24/7 to make calls and deal with issues if they come up.

I guess they are paying markmonitor because of their ability to reach out to Godaddy and get stuff resolved.

Imagine being a small startup with a similar problem. Godaddy will not even entertain you.

Well, another point of MarkMonitor is to get access to ccTLDs with requirements that are more difficult for you to meet yourself. Like needing to have a physical address within the country. MarkMonitor has offices in a bunch of countries just to meet that requirement, so they can sell ccTLD domains to customers.

The legality of that system seems a little questionable to me, but IANAL.

>The whole point of paying for MarkMonitor is that they're an expensive service for valuable domains

the whole point of MarkMonitor is more in the trademark realm, rather than a cloud sysop role.

"Mark" is what trademarks are called in the ... trade.