Old proverb: "To speak the names of the departed is to make them live again."

Monday, March 28, 2011

World Wide Web Deems 'Fieg' a Four-letter Word

By Greg Fieg


Word has reached the Fieg family that the web address "Fieg.com" is among millions of web domains across the universe owned and protected and "parked" by an individual or individuals who are offering it for sale.


Along with not only every four-letter word in the dictionary but every four-letter combination in the alphabet, the Fiegs no more can own the web address "Fieg.com" than we could any other four-letter word of interest, such as "Fish.com," "Cows.com," "Golf.com,"  "Flag.com" etc.

Not that anyone should be interested in the web address "Fieg.com," but whether you are a member of the Italian organization F.I.E.G. (Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali) or whether you are someone selling Ronnie Fieg shoes, you have no more claim to that name than anyone else.

Every four-letter configuration is claimed and at last count every five-letter combination was at or near exhaustion plus every word in the dicionary of seven, eight, nine and ten or more letters is also under controlled ownership.  That is to say, if you want to create a web domain called "Egomania.com" for instance, forget it.  It's taken.  One wonders how long it would have been before the world got around to claiming the address Fiegfamily@blogspot.com.

To extrapolate the astronomical number of these combinations that have been taken over by various Internet domain owners would likely take a greater mind than has any Fieg, considering that if you start with the letter "A," and combine it with "B," "C" and so on, there would have to be 26 possibilities at every turn.  It is safe to say that there would be millions upon millions.

If anyone has the formula, please advise of the final tally.  We await with bated breath.

1 comment:

Doug Fieg said...

Not only can a Fieg (this Fieg) compute the number of four-letter web sites, the original author practically had the answer already worked out! The number of four-letter websites is easily computed as:

26 x 26 x 26 x 26 = 456,976

In other words, "26 possibilities at every turn." The only thing is, it doesn't really turn out to be millions and millions. In fact, it isn't really even one million.

There ya go. Let your breath no longer be bated.