• JunkClick.com , Thursday, August 7, 2008 3:15 PM

When ICANN changed the rules for top-level domain (TLD) names last month, Webmasters imagined an unlimited number of new possible Web site addresses. And the country of Montenegro was seemingly one of the first beneficiaries of the change, as it was granted .me as its official TLD.

Companies with visions of Web addresses like optimize.me in their heads salivated at the chance to buy a .me domain once they became available through GoDaddy, Montenegro's partner. But the experience quickly became a nightmare as thousands of people that tried to register .me domains were charged for domains that actually weren't available.

It seems that Montenegro was well aware of the high demand that its .me domains would spark, and so it registered them under a separate corporation and filed them away to be auctioned at a later date--and GoDaddy neglected to tell the thousands of potential registrars.

"GoDaddy marketed the .me domains and hyped them for months and successfully kept the list of withheld names under wraps," writes the Junk Clicks blogger. "If everyone knew that virtually all the desirable domain names were already taken, how much excitement and demand for .me would there be? Virtually none."

Read the whole story at JunkClick.com »