| Nominet in the UK and ICANN (internationally) have | | | | that were less than five days old. Domain kiters used |
| expressed great concern over the fact that huge | | | | to use Google AdSense to make money; however, |
| numbers of domain names have been registered | | | | since the Google ban and the ICANN fees, this |
| without payment since early 2006. The number of | | | | practice has come to a screeching halt. However, the |
| domains registered for free is in the millions. 32 million | | | | fees have only caused a small inconvenience for big |
| out of 35 million registered domain names in April | | | | time domain tasters. |
| 2006 were taken for free! | | | | Because of the high number of domains registered, |
| These maneuvers were known as domain kiting and | | | | the cost for deleting domains within a given grace |
| domain tasting. If you register a domain name multiple | | | | period are not high compared to the costs of doing |
| times and cancel it multiple times in rapid succession, | | | | so. Therefore, domain name tasting is still profitable |
| you will end up owning it for free. This is domain | | | | to the big time players. They just pay their fees and |
| kiting. A scheme of utilizing the five-day grace period | | | | keep on going using other ad companies besides |
| to register a multitude of domains, domain tasting | | | | Google Ad Sense. AdBrite is one example. However, |
| helps the schemer find out the most valuable | | | | it is a problem for small players. For this reason, UK's |
| domains to keep. The person who registered the | | | | Nominet created new regulations and rules to end |
| domains decides what names to keep and which to | | | | contracts with registrants who continue this sort of |
| delete without paying for them. | | | | practice. These steps have been fairly effective in |
| ICANN altered the policy and fee structure around | | | | halting the practice of abusing the system by |
| August of 2008 to eliminate those schemes. To put | | | | employing domain tasting to try out domain names |
| an end to this, Google made the announcement that | | | | without having to pay for them. |
| they would no longer place ads on domain names | | | | |