Ian Steele asked:
If I go, for example to godaddy and buy a domain. It mentions that you can buy a website eg ‘abc123.com’ and then you’ll have to renew it if you want to keep it.
How do websites like google.com/youtube.com keep their name and prevent others from taking it? Is there a lease for 1000years (for example)? How exactly does it work?
2 Responses to 'Do website urls expire?'
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You purchase a “lease” usually for 1,2,3,5 years and then when it gets close to the expiry date you get the choice to extend the lease being the current registrant. If you decide not too I think it goes into a bucket for 6months or so before anyone else can lease it.
As has already been mentioned you can have a lease for a certain period but some of the major sites will probably have an auto renewal option active so that when the domain is about to expire it will be renewed automatically so no other person with malicious intent can obtain that domain for their own sick purposes.