The reason why Rick Schwartz is selling Widgets.com and has stopped blogging

My previous post points to an ebay auction of Rick Schwartz’s domain name Widgets.com at ebay.

At the end of the post I ask

The reason Rick wants to cash out? Who knows, perhaps he is testing the waters for some of his bigger names? Perhaps he is raising cash for another project? Or he might know something we don’t know about the web and domaining in the next couple of years/months!

Well, I did some digging around and in actual fact, Rick has stopped blogging for good. He is selling Widgets.com perhaps to focus on his main domain names including the launch of his new project Property.com.

A year ago Rick wrote a post describing the imminent threat to domain owners and domaining in general. He actually predicted the Snowe Bill except not many people listened. The future is now, the Snowe Bill is almost here and the demise of domaining as we know it is in the near future.

Rick and many big time domainers are closing ranks and focusing on their own businesses as they prepare for what is to come.

Frank Schilling stopped blogging, and now Rick Schwartz. Does that tell you something?

If you read this post by Rick Schwarz you will understand things a lot better. The continuous abuse of trademarked names and various other dirty actions of some individuals and organizations in the domaining industry have pretty much ruined it for all of us. The sharks have smelled blood and now there is no stopping them:

Those assets are worth a fortune. No matter what silly appraisal you have had, GREAT domains are worth much more than what they say. The proof will be obvious when you see the millions they will spend to get what you have at a FRACTION of the fair market value.

When you look at it objectively the governments and large corporations will do everything in their power to take the power away from individual domainers. Think about it? Domains like food.com, sex.com, sports.com … these are all unique, genuine masterpieces - one of a kind - how can they allow one person to own an asset like that into the future. You cannot place value on any of those domain names.

Perhaps there is still something that can be done. Go on to SnoweBill and sign the petition against the bill. Blog about what Rick has tried to tell us. Raise issues at your favourite forums. And most importantly, consolidate your assets. Start developing your most valuable domain names, so that you are not caught out. I certainly will.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Domain News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.