Dear Disney,

I grew up watching your movies and television shows and appreciate all you do for kids everywhere. Since you’re based in Burbank, California, I also did quite a bit of research on your company for my website, Burbank.com. However, some of your recent domain registrations are a disservice to children who will inevitably type them in incorrectly, and they will quite possibly end up seeing unrelated advertising offers at best, or pornography at worst.

Let me remind you about an incident involving typo domain names and children. Have a look at the Wikipedia page for John Zuccarini. There are people out there who will register typo domain names intentionally, and when they do, they can control what the visitor sees. Whether it’s pay per click advertising or porn, it will cost your company a fair amount of money to get those domain names back via the legal channel, when you can simply register the typos now.

I noticed that some of your new registrations contain not only one – but sometimes even two hyphens. By using these domain names, you are just asking for trouble. In addition, some of them are tough to spell and some have additional words that are more descriptive than actually necessary. For example, if you need to add “movie” to the domain name, do you really need “themovie”?  This is especially silly when both versions were available to register – and you only took one!

I know that good domain names are tough to find. However, if you settle on a long tail domain name that has hyphens, at least buy the same domain name without the hyphen – especially when it’s available to register for the same price.

Ordinarily, I would register one or more of the typo domain names to give to you at cost, but I don’t want to deal with your legal team who might think I have devious intentions. If you care about protecting children from viewing inappropriate material, and you’d like to know which domain names I am referencing, contact me.

Regards,

**

Update:

I spoke with someone in the Marvel Legal Department, and hopefully they will register the most concerning domain name ASAP.

I just received an email from GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, and the email announced a price increase for .com and .net domain registrations. As of July 1, 2010, the price of .com domain names will increase 7%, while the price of .net domain names will increase by 10%. The email cited VeriSign’s price increase as the reason.

I am sure that other registrars will send similar emails to their customers, so keep this in mind if you want to renew and/or extend the length of your domain registrations prior to the price increase.

A 7% increase may not seem like a lot of money, but if you have a portfolio of 1,000 names at Godaddy and pay the full price of $10.69, a 7% increase means you will pay $11.44 per name, an increase of $750 for your entire portfolio.

Here’s the email that was just sent by Godaddy:

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On July 1, 2010, VeriSign®, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices – .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%.

The increase will be passed to registrars like Go Daddy and then, unfortunately, to consumers like you.

As of July 1, we will be forced to raise registration and renewal* prices for these two popular top-level domains.

If you wish to avoid this price increase, you can renew your domain names by June 30 and add another year to your current expiration dates. You have the option to register or renew for multiple years and lock in long-term savings. Of course, should you have any questions, please give us a call at 1-480-505-8821.

Thanks as always for being a Go Daddy customer.

TechCrunch is reporting that HomeAway has acquired BedAndBreakfast.com for an undisclosed sum. HomeAway is a vacation rental company that operates a number of web properties, including VacationRentals.com, VRBO.com, and several other popular websites. Homeaway has close to a half a billion dollars in funding.

BedAndBreakfast.com is a website featuring over 10,000 bed and breakfast properties found throughout the world. The website provides reservation services and reviews of its listed bed and breakfasts. According to Compete, the website receives over 370,000 unique visitors per month.

In addition to the BedAndBreakfast.com property, I spoke with a representative at BedAndBreakfast.com who confirmed that HomeAway also acquired Inns.com as part of the deal. Inns.com is similar to BedAndBreakfast.com, but it caters to clients looking for inns rather than bed and breakfasts. According to Compete, Inns.com receives somewhere around 10,000 unique visitors per month.

Both companies are based in Austin, Texas.