Since Sochi was nominated as the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, cybersquatters have snatched up a plethora of websites bearing the name of the city, including Sochi.info, which was bought for under €100 and is now up for sale for €3million.

The domain speculator needs to be able to sense trends: Nikolai Odintsov registered Sochi.info some time ago, when there was very little need for such a website. Now, some customers are willing to pay USD$600,000 for it, but Odintsov hopes to sell it for several times as much.

"Since the announcement that Sochi was selected for the 2014 Winter Olympics short list, more than 1,000 domains containing the word Sochi were registered. And the announcement of the winner was awaited not only by our Bidding Committee, but also by cyber squatters. As soon as it was declared Russia won the bid, fifty more Sochi-related domains were registered. And it was quite a challenge to even find anything left that was free!" said Andrey Vorobyov, an Internet Registrar spokesman.

The Russian country-code top-level domain, .ru, is selling better than ever; Vorobyov adds that last year, the number of .ru registrations grew by 60%. As the ccTLD gains popularity, cybersquatters are rushing to pounce on generic Russian and English terms to register. One domain registrant, Larisa Shevchenko, was threatened by other registrants who claimed that they were the rightful owners of one of her domains. There have, according to Shevchenko, been instances of beatings rather than money as an incentive for handing over a valuable Domain Name.

The rush on .ru Domain Names has led to a dearth of good remaining terms; only about half of Russian dictionary words remain.