can you confirm or deny 'how i see it'?

After lurking here for a week-ish and working on my impression of a sponge, I realized a TLD is the basis of pretty much every IM method, so I been doin research on getting a domain. This is how I see it, some hosting offers free domain registration, but they are allowed to do anything with it when you stop paying them, no matter how much SEO you've done, even if you just want to change hosting, which will screw with your branding unless you pay them a butload of money for the rights to your domain. So i started looking into registering a domain separately but what happens to your domain at expiration if the company goes under for whatever reason. Do you have to hope you can reregister before someone snipes it for a quick profit?I dont like the thought of bowing to a corporate structure like godaddy, but it seems like greed fuels power and gives them more longevity over everyone they can call 'little fish'. Please tell me there is some kind of domain ownership insurance so i can support one the little fish without risking the loss of my brand if the big fish are able to drown them?

One week of lurking and you got stuck before you even start? You should rather work on some methods than doing these out-of-box thinking.

Im not stuck. Just curious. And its not out-of-the-box thinking, just planning for the future. Did you even read more than a couple sentences?

OP, buy your Domain and Hosting separately.

Make sure the company selling you the Domain is on this list:
https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accredited-list.html
and you will have nothing to worry about.

Start thinking about your business and forget about the big/little fish.

If you domain name expires, you have a redemption period in which only you can get it back.

There are many companies besides GoDaddy.

Grazy is right, though. This should not have even slowed you down. You need hosting and domain names if you are going to do IM, over thinking things is going to drive you crazy.

My wife yells at me for being so overanalytical. I cant help it, and am used to crazy, i cant help it. But yes, i know there are more than godaddy. I was hoping i wouldnt have to use them(mainly the SOPA thing, and their view of net neutrality). I guess i was just worried that a domain purchase was locked in to the seller and what would happen if that particular seller went down. But i read some of that icann link up there from w130sn and it helped a lot

Namecheap is a nice company, they have the right attitude as far as my experience with them goes. Godaddy is no-no for me, too many troubles in the past, way past strike 3 with them.

I agree with the above advice: buy domain and host separately, nobody can take the domain from you unless you're doing some major illegal stuff.

Im sorry Mr Durden. I wasnt allowed to reply like that. I just now noticed the domains subforum. I posted in the wrong place.