The industry has been around since the bubble days of the late 90's and it's heating up again. Domain names are being bought up and auctioned at a pace that is reminiscent of those glory days, only this time around it's the generic names that have caught all the attention. Back in the wild west days of the world wide web, before companies protected their property online, enterprising entrepreneurs bought up names and held them for ransom until the law got involved and cyber-squating was squashed. Now it's the generic names that are hot, domainers as they are known take advantage of the fact that many people type generic words into their browsers, put a ".com" on the end and hope the results will turn up what they are looking for. The owners fill their pages with context sensitive ads and hope to get paid by the click through or hope the domain gathers enough interest that it can later be sold or auctioned off. This Globe and Mail story discusses the concept in more detail and the numbers can be huge if you own the right property!
