Most importantly, Domain Pigeon now has free domain names, not available domain names. They’re free now? Well… not really. Depends on what you mean by “free”. No one owns the domains, so they are free of ownership. However, to own one, you do have to pay for the registration, which costs a few bucks.

I talked to a bunch of people about whether to make the change. Their responses ranged from “sure, why not?” to “well… they’re not really free in the way that people mean free.” I wanted people to say the first answer, but most said the second.

Ultimately, I ignored them and made the change for two reasons:

Traffic

The competition is a lot tougher, but, hey, why not go for gold? Bronze should never be your goal.

Humanitarian

Just kidding. Here’s the thing: none of the other search results for free domain names are really free either. They all are “free” if you sign up for some expensive hosting plan:

It costs registrars something like $6 to actually register a domain name. None are free w/o a catch.

So in a sense…. I’m doing people a service if I get domain pigeon high enough on the search results.

You’ve got to love rationalization.