> I think one of the problems is that as more and more individual consumers buy domains
Huh, I was always under the assumption that the percentage of domains bought by individual consumers is shrinking. As in, in the early days of the internet until ~2010 where commercialization was only slowly picking up (or only concentrated to a few domains), the majority of domains were personal websites and blogs.
The percentage share of personal domains doesn’t tell you everything. More and more consumers probably are buying personal domains just by the nature of it getting cheaper and easier to host and there being more people on the internet year over year. Could be proven wrong though because I don’t know how to get the numbers.
> Huh, I was always under the assumption that the percentage of domains bought by individual consumers is shrinking.
Yes, but a segment of the domain market still buys their name domains and defends them on the Internet.
I bought my fname+lname domain a few years ago, but I'm not planning to surrender it to a random conglomerate.
> As in, in the early days of the internet until ~2010 where commercialization was only slowly picking up (or only concentrated to a few domains), the majority of domains were personal websites and blogs.
A deep part of me hopes this part of the market never dies, for the good health of the Internet's sovereignity.