Why can’t one register a domain name themselves, instead of paying a company to do it?

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I’m completely dumbfounded.

I searched up a domain name I would like, and it turned out that no one owned it, it was just a ”Can’t reach the site” message. My immediate thought is how can I get this site, it should be free right? Since I’m not actually renting it or buying it from anyone, it’s completely unused.

I google it up and can’t find a single answer, all everyone says is you need to buy a subscription from a company like GoDaddy, Domain.com, One.com and others. These companies don’t own the site I wanted, they must register it in some way before they sell it to me, so why can’t I just register it myself and skip the middle man?

Seriously, are these companies paying google to hide this info?

In: Technology

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Computers don’t communicate in plaintext like we humans do. In a rudimentary internet connection, domain names don’t exist; instead you have to visit websites by their IP address.

Of course, that’s incredibly tedious; humans can’t remember a hundred different numbers the way they can remember 100 different words, so instead we use domain name servers (DNS), which are specialized computers that link a domain (google.com) to an IP (74.125.239.35). When you enter a domain in your URL, the packet is first sent to a DNS, which then maps the domain you entered to its valid IP before sending it off to that destination.

When you pay for a domain name, you’re not necessarily paying for the rights to that name, you’re paying whoever your leasing from to host your domain in their DNS.

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