Yeah and I'd agree there as well. There are plenty of places where land is too expensive and developers buy up property for speculation and not for building or community value.
So congrats on the fact the market does what it does? I'm not anti-capitalist, obviously products deserve market value, but that doesn't mean I'd cheer on something that makes startup's lives harder.
Do you know how Dudu.com was used prior to the sale? Maybe the owner had big plans for it or already built something. I have no idea, but I did hear it was not for sale at the time of the purchase. It's not like the social network started out on godudu.com and the seller then bought dudu.com with the hopes of selling it to the startup.
A certain well known funded startup wants a certain name. But the name is owned by google (and not in use). If a domainer owned the name it wouldn't be cheap but it would be possible.
Likewise the perfect name that a startup wants that is owned by a local distribution company with 50 employees isn't going to be had for a trivial amount of money either.
Startups who can't get the name they want always assume that nobody would have the name until they wanted it. And it would just be sitting there.
If you know the domain business you would realize that the people who own names (lots of names) know when to fold their hand and not wait possibly forever for another deal to come along.
dudu.com by the way has pretty consistent content (it's in chinese) that goes back to the 90's. So most likely it was an operating site and a company that had to be compensated. If this domain was owned by a domainer it would have sold for a 10th of the price or less.
It's an example of excessive domain name costs, which - exactly as smackfu is saying - hampers startup's flexibility with names.