A complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet has been given the go-ahead in Paris.The net's regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called "top-level" domain names, such as .com or .uk.
The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.
Here it goes, I am the first to post the news (hopefully)
This is kind of nuts. Big mistake.
[edited by: engine at 4:49 pm (utc) on June 26, 2008]
[edit reason] added quote [/edit]
One man's nonsense stream of letters is another man's famous last name or how a city's name "is sounded-out and/or spelled using English".
Which they won't approve. "I'm sorry sir, but .con is a typo of .com and ultimately outweighs any use you would have for it. Please choose another one of the millions of possible extensions."
ICANN may have lost their mind by doing this, but they can't be completely insane by letting someone pay 100,000+ for .con, which is obviously only valuable as a typo.
I'd really like to sit some of those ICANN muppets down in front of a computer and make them write a valid e-mail parser in PHP or ASP.
Regards...jmcc
Which they won't approve. "I'm sorry sir, but .con is a typo of .com . .
Do I think there may be a few "bright line" gTLDs that won't be approved? Possibly, but I'm not convinced even your .Con example will be denied "due to the obvious problem".
"The Chair recognizes the delegate from Spain."
"Mr. Chairman, 'con' means 'with' in the hispanic languages. We, the Spanish, Mexican, Portuguese and other Latin delegations protest the proposed denial of the .Con gTLD.! Con is a word dear to us . . and, BTW, it is the acronym for our largest (whatever) . . and, sir, why must we defer to the American .Com interests or the interests of the English speaking countries (especially when we currently have more votes on the Board) . ."
[edited by: Webwork at 8:32 pm (utc) on June 26, 2008]
Don't forget, 95% of the time people go to a website from a search engine or their favoutites, so the .com / .comm / .comn tipo idea (woops, meant typo) is a bit irrelevant.
You're kidding right? The domain typo industry is huge.
Your 95% number is completely inaccurate. Direct navigation accounts for a very large portion of traffic.
"The Chair recognizes the delegate from Spain."
The delegate from Italy doth protest, "con" derives from the Latin therefore it's ours!
new jobs will be created, more travel to conferences at exotic locations, etc.
I agree. There will be money and there will be fun jobs--vice president, at least--for everyone who raised their hand at the boardroom table.
The white shoe consulting firms are currently preparing a white paper on this, which you can purchase for only $1,250.00.
But if it's only available to those who can pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars, I see this as a non-event. Companies with mondo deep pockets will buy their names - Microsoft, Disney, IBM, etc. But if your company is that big, you almost certainly own microsoft.com, disney.com, etc., and why would you change the domain that EVERYONE already knows?
So for the foreseeable future, no one is going to care about these new gTLDs.
Too bad - I thought it was a brave new world. Turns out that the ICANN people just wanted to buy new Porches.
For english-speaking world, I see nothing but more spam.
However, since they are introducing domains in different alphabets, such as cyrillic...this can be very country-specific and interesting. I'd bet we'll se a ".py" (for Russia) real soon.
one thing good would be that it could put an end to high-flying rates for certain domains, due to the very large number of variations available on "lucrative" terms
Why?
If someone is selling "mycompany.com" for $25,000, buying ".mycompany" for $350,000 isn't a solution.
Agreed on all of the posts above. I was surprised they went with it. It has the potential to be a nightmare. Very funny on the .smith tld :-)
Edit: Oh, except for Wiki and Blog. Those actually sound like great ones to nab.
So this could be a repeat of the .info fiasco where spammers got lots of domain names really cheaply?
One report says that ICANN will first look at launching TLD's like .sco (Scotland) and .nyc (New York) for example.
Take the last example. Why would you go for .nyc when you could try to get .newyork other than to protect a trade mark or a business name. Then you have new.york, newyork.city .newyorkcity etc
In the short term I doubt the change will make much difference other than to potentially create lots of new domains to compete with.
Imagine how much .news will go for! bbc.news, cnn.news the list is endless.
Why ICANN would push this through and not allow .#*$! which would help stop a whole load of problems as anything adult would have to be on that TLD is beyond me.
They should make this a $500K fee to start; if it's a good one, they will get their money back.
Won't it just make the older TLD's like .com, .net, .org more important for the SE's, because they will be seen moreso as authority domains?
It all depends on how the new gTLD's are administered and interpreted by search engines (hmm, by Google really).
There are many potential good things to come from it - but the bad things and spam outweighs any good in the short-term at least.
Perhaps it is the intention of ICANN to actually categorise the web (well, not really their idea but something that could become useful from this fiasco if done in the right way).
It also depends on how other domain names within the new gTLD's operate - whether they could be registered by anyone or whether any new domains could be created without needing to present a business plan and legitimate reasons for requiring such a domain.
It also depends on how other domain names within the new gTLD's operate - whether they could be registered by anyone or whether any new domains could be created without needing to present a business plan and legitimate reasons for requiring such a domain.
Yes, this is so important. With the .com there were problems with people registering thailand.com etc
On the surface it also would seem thet the whole process could very easily be open to abuse. How to decide if one business plan is more meriting than another or whether it is even a real business plan at all. I know for TLD's like .news they said it could go to an auction but what a mess!
But now ICANN seems to be opening a can of worms. Will anyone be able to register .smallvillage .famousbeachtown .smalltown .largecity etc
This could really catch on for users if they find they can get all the info they need by typing myneed.london as an example.
[edited by: Visit_Thailand at 12:54 am (utc) on June 27, 2008]
It all depends on how the new gTLD's are administered and interpreted by search engines (hmm, by Google really).
For sure. I'm being hopeful and assuming that the new .whatever tld's will be seen as second-class. There'll certainly be a lot of them. I'm definitely not abandoning my main .org site.
And also, who wants long tld's? They were usually limited to three characters in the past for a reason. They're short.
No one here has written about good SEO & genuine relevant content with "most" TLD extensions.
Geo-targetting by G etc...?
You can have as many extensions as you like with the most "desirable?" names e.g. info@a.a
Great eh? We're company "a" trying to sell you "a" product. Doesn't really work, does it?
Ok, domainers, there is a REAL world out there, companies that actually PRODUCE saleable items!
Can you ever see the possibility of .cocacola? Why? You either type in cocacola.com or...what? A note for SEO'ers here, it goes to coca-cola.com or your local extension.
ICANN seriously need a good head massage finding out whether they have ANY bumps whatsoever.
As an owner of many domain names and many own company web sites, this is pointless. It will not increase consumer choice, it WILL lead to more confusion and, undoubtedly, more corrupt+phisingsites attempting to trade off the back of genuine businesses.
.anything...arghhhh...(.fubar)...hmmm..I like that:-))
No one here has written about good SEO & genuine relevant content with "most" TLD extensions.
Yeah, good point. It doesn't matter what tld is stuck on the end of the URL. If you have good content and good inbound links, you'll still do well. All in all, it may be a tempest in a teapot for SEO. Not necessarily good for users, though. And when you're telling someone your website address, the simpler the better. Not everyone comes in to a site via a SE.
Apologies if that's not what you were really talking about.
Could it not lead to people getting used to typing bars.newyork in the browser or hotels.london or computer.discounts eventually even seeing the "." as an @
Of course that would take time, but if it happened it would reduce the SEO impact quite a bit.
I agree with the confusion points though. This whole thing seems to have been very badly thought out.
[edited by: Visit_Thailand at 3:30 am (utc) on June 27, 2008]
Somebody needs to step up to ICANN and tell them plain and simple: "ENOUGH!": go back to start, do not receive $400 (or whatever their currency in their monopoly game is).
How can we actually oust them ? Impeachment ;-) ?
What percentage of people are going to type barclays.bank.com into their browser instead?
People often type in the www when it isn't needed, so they will carry on typing .com on the end of everything too.
