The main reason is you have more protection and guaranteed continual ownership of the thing (depending on the TLD you choose, of course). Whereas if this service shut down in 12 months time ... well it wouldn't be buckling any trends by doing so.
And if they shut down and let the omg.lol lapse or sell it, someone could then redirect all the subdomains to who knows what.
Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
Domains are easier to resell. I don't think there will be a secondary market for omg.lol and if you sell you business based on an omg.lol it will be a red flag vs. a top level domain.
On the other hand if you intent is a personal CV / bio type page, with email (you need fastmail too) and so on, the $20 is a great deal.
But I would rather just use a xyz.netlify.com for such a project, then couple that with a free email service.
> Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
I think that them being on the https://wiki.mozilla.org/Public_Suffix_List makes that unlikely. (a Public Suffix is a thing like .co.uk — would it make sense to blacklist .co.uk? Not unless you're the type of postmaster who is willing to blacklist entire TLDs like .biz as well.)
Ok I didn't know about this list. Feel like I should have known! I always though it was up to countries and top-level operators. I imagined something like .uk publishing somehow that .co.uk is a top level domain, for example.
I think the requirements to run a top level domain, like .lol itself are pretty onerous? But I wonder if it is easier to get your subdomain added to the public suffix list, and I wonder what legal guarantees are afforded to someone who registers such a domain.
- 3.1: The fact that a content license is necessary at all, and that it's still worded too broadly for my taste.
- 3.2: "We may change, suspend, or discontinue any of our Services." [...] "We make no representation, warranty or condition regarding the availability or operability of the Services at any time." This means you effectively have no ownership of the subdomain and no control over the availability of the services. Your website, email address, Mastodon instance, etc., may become permanently nonfunctional at any moment, without any recourse.
For the same reason people have been paying for services like this for over 2 decades? This is such a strange thread. If you don't want an omg.lol site, don't buy one! I'm not!
This might be a super interesting case study, because if I had to bet, it's that 80%+ of the hate on this thread comes from the DNS feature omg.lol added --- a feature not common among other content hosting services, and that probably doesn't need to be there at all for omg.lol's market. They made a feature for nerds, not realizing that you have to be super careful about nerds or they'll bite your head off for trying to appeal to them the wrong way. Third-level domains! The gall!
