Domain name buying is back in fashion once again--with registrations reaching levels last seen in 2000.
While domain name carpetbagging became a sport during the dot-com boom, as entrepreneurs snapped up URLs they hoped to sell for thousands of dollars, today"s buyers are generally legitimate and simply want a Web address in order to publish a Web site.
More than 4.7 million new registrants joined the list of owners in the first three months of this year--an all-time high, according to VeriSign"s latest domain name report. The number of registrations for the first quarter of this year shows 21 percent growth year over year. Generic top-level domains like .biz and .name are the poor cousins of the domain name game, with 8 percent of registrations compared with .com"s 45 percent.