During a special meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors a resolution was passed which will end domain tasting as we know it. The discussion was sparked in response to the scandalous practice of Network Solutions hijacking domain searches in recent weeks. Oddly enough, the industry can be thankful to Net Sol for getting the snowball rolling on the end of domain tasting.

Grace Period Abuse Leads to the End

In this preliminary report, you will see the acronym AGP thrown around alot. AGP stands for “Add Grace Period” an idea initially created to reimburse domain registrants for names they accidentally registered or miss-typed.

The official resolution states, “The practice of ‘domain tasting,’ by which names are registered and then deleted during the AGP, has grown at a very great rate since 2005, with tens of millions of domains registered and deleted each month.”

And the kicker… “The Board believes that the withdrawal of ICANN’s waiver of ICANN’s non-refundable transaction fee to the deletion of names within the AGP will substantially end the practice of abusing the AGP.”

A voice vote was taken of all Board Members present and the motion was approved by a vote of 13-0.

What does this mean for the domaining industry?

This change in policy will improve many aspects of domaining in general;

  • The typo-squatting business will plummet as domain tasting is somewhat essential for profitable typo choices.
  • Expired domain after-market will thrive as lists begin to be “cleansed” from these bogus tasted names.
  • Pay-Per-Click parking services may become more reputable as domains will be long standing and garner targeted traffic.
  • Registrars will become more credible down the road, because in many cases they themselves were the biggest players in domain tasting.
  • Domainers will not have to worry about companies stealing WHOIS search data.

It is not certain when this change will begin to take effect, but sources reveal it may be within a month.

What are your thoughts on this revolutionary news?