New TLDs Announced
from the who-cares? dept
After waiting forever, ICANN finally got around to assigning the new top level domains. Someone here at Techdirt is associated with one of the companies that “won”, so I won’t be too harsh… However, this all seems a little pointless to me. First, people have been waiting for this forever. The delay had something to do with concerns over trademark questions, and yet, those haven’t been answered at all. Then, while ICANN says they went through a large number of proposals before deciding which ones to chose, the results still seem incredibly arbitrary. To be honest, a lot of this has the feel of something that a lot of companies are hyping up, but which might not really be as big as everyone thinks it is.
Comments on “New TLDs Announced”
No Subject Given
I agree mike but when we (sorry I couldn’t resist) applied for .name it was as a proof of concept. I know a lot of people are sending out harsh criticisms of the names that were accepted but they’re all different types of domain level experiments (i.e. .aero will probably be run by sita and was probably granted as an experiment into vertical level domains for specific industries, to indentify if they might be useful).
But remember if these “experiments” succeed icann plan on continuing a roll out of further general top level domains.
p.s. I think that chicken.coop is going to be a hot one (the guys at Slashdot are getting all excited about it).
Re: No Subject Given
That’s a very good point (the experimental). I didn’t even think about that. Of course, as time rolls on, will that mean that general names like .com will not be used much at all, or will only very general vertical level domains be granted? Also, if that happens, regulations will have to be put in place to define who fits in where – will this turn the internet into a more have and have-not sort of place? ie If you are an airplane business (I’m not very creative this morning), but you don’t quite fit the requirements for .aero for one reason or another, will you be looked down because you have to adopt a lowly .com name?
BTW, I actually think that the .name concept is pretty good, once they figure out how to manage 10 million John Smiths applying for webpages. I for one don’t want to be typing in John.Smith7684766.name, or even worse, searching for the one John Smith page I want amongst 9000000 of them.
But what are they going represent?
I actually had a long tirade about what are they going to represent, but I actually went and did a little work, and for anyone besides myself who is still puzzled about what exactly these new names are supposed to represent, check out this AP article on Yahoo. It gives a brief rundown of what the domains are supposed to cover. I think .info and .pro are my favourites, while .aero and possibly .coop probably could have been replaced by a better choice – they’re my least favourite, and in my opinion, the least useful (I hope no one at Techdirt was associated with these). Of course, that’s just my opinion. My suggestion? I’m sure ICANN even got it a few times – .crud or .crap to help clear out all the useless stuff. Or even better, relegate all banner ads, popup ads, etc. to a simple .ad domain, so we’d never have to see them again.
Re: But what are they going represent?
What did you think about .name? I’d be interested in getting an unbiased opinion (feel free to dis’ it if you don’t like it)?
Re: Re: But what are they going represent?
Last night I was driven nuts by the decision process, it felt almost like a football game that’s tied up until the last minute. I’ve slept like 3 hours today and yesterday. I actually think that ICANN are being a little more original by “testing” these strings out (I think a lot of people don’t really understand ICANN’s motivation for these TLD’s).
Re: Re: Re: Ryans...
I’m confused by who’s who in the Ryan posts here… 🙂
Anyway, I don’t think these new TLDs solve any problems. It’s not like anyone is really enforcing the strict adherence to being an org to have a dot-org. Are the owners of the new TLDs going to be more strict about who can get a domain? If I buy a domain, can I sell it to whoever I want to? Can I sell it for millions if some fool is willing to pay? I guess I need to read up on why ICANN thought this would change anything….
Re: Re: Re:2 Ryans...
Yeah, I agree, that I’m not sure why this is being done. If this is a test (as one of the Ryan’s implies) then, why isn’t that clear. Why isn’t ICANN saying “this is a test”? For all the time it took and planning that went into this, it seems pretty muddied.
NTK's take
Personally, I like NTK’s take on the matter:
Re: NTK's take
I like the “any number of TLDs are possible” comment. I’ve always wondered why there’s a limit. We should just make make TLDs unlimited in size, and *really* use it only for classification. By that I mean TLDs could be a really long string of keywords, but in order to be in that TLD, you actually have to prove that you are associated with every keyword. Yes, I realize it makes it impossible to type in a URL, but then I think URLs are outdated and browsers should be able incorporate a mini-search engine to get you to the URL you want to go to. There are probably tons of technical problems with this proposal, but what do I know anyway? I just think there’s a better way to organize the net. What that way is… I guess we’ll find out someday.
Re: Re: NTK's take
I have to admit that I’m not too certain about a mini search engine, they still aren’t accurate enough to have to use one everytime you want to type in a domain. Having unlimited tlds with classification systems would be a pain in the butt to implement (we looked into when we applied for .name and it turned out to be unfeasible). But your right, eventually these gtlds will be extended to a much larger number and broader array of types.