zlacker

I've been shy of purchasing a domain name for years ever since I did an availability search on a registrar's site only to discover that the domain had been "reserved" a few milliseconds before my search and would therefore cost more.

It was so obviously shady that I just backed away and have been waiting ever since for some other naming system to become viable.

Meanwhile, this announcement is a ray of sunshine from behind the Cloudflare. (Sorry for the pun! I coudn't resist.)

>>carapa+(OP)
CloudFlare doesn't say they wouldn't do the same (although I believe they won't).

I don't really believe when people claim the registrars registered the domains themselves when they typed it in a search box. For example, it costs the registrars around $8 to register a .com, even for themselves. They make $1-2 profit from a purchase, and I would say spending $8 hoping the same user who searched it will be locked in is a risky gamble.

Sure, one can out a real human to assess the domain searches and try to lock users in, but it's still a gamble.

>>Ayesh+G5
It was years ago and I can't remember the details, but I remember I used some registrar's domain-name-availability widget and somehow the name had been "reserved" (not registered) in a way that meant they would change me more money, and I was somehow able to find some other thing that showed the reservation had happened right around the moment I searched.

I'm sorry I can't give better details, but I remember clearly the sense of "Now that's pretty fishy..."