news The Domain Industry Is About To Change BIGTIME!!!

[daj]

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7468855.stm

 

[whitebark]

ICANN gives far too many Internet users too much credit...

Anyone ever watch their parents/grandparents or other seniors surf the net? Most know .com and their cctld and little else. They barely understand how the extension correlates now, but to add these new types of domains will really confuse them, and as another NPer mentioned - will open the potential for a field day for phishing/scams.

 

[treebytheriver]

is this the icann project? http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-22jun08-en.htm

or am I totally off here? If thats the project, there is a way to publically post comments " Comments on the draft document are welcome via email at [email protected]. To be considered by the IDNC WG in Paris, any comments should be submitted by 23 June 2008. An archive of all comments received will be publicly posted at http://forum.icann.org/lists/idn-cctld-fast-track/

 

[Steven]

Who said there would be a dot ?

It could be just Coke as the domain.

True.

I haven't really thought of it that way.

LeviJeans, Coke, Pepsi, etc

 

[james2002]

Who said there would be a dot ?

It could be just Coke as the domain.

They say in the article hundreds of new domain names could be invented but they never explicitly say extensions. Maybe just bad writing.

Yes, i was thinking that way too. I had this idea a few weeks ago and I mentioned somewhere in this forum that if people can type without any .com , .net , .info etc..., it is the best domain.

It will definitely reduce price of .com .

 

[martinisky]

This smells like confusion and dilution to me. The more you dilute extension names it seems the more .com will remain king especially because people will be so confused with dots being placed everywhere..... And in fact i think it smells mostly of greed by icaan. Why would Coke need to have a .cola extension when they could have any website they want with *****.coke.com?

IMO the only real thing that will hurt .com would be if there was an extension that didnt have an extension! you want to go to Coke's website? Type in coke, thats it. no more need for .com .net .stupidextensionnamehere. But that will never happen because then they'd eventually run out of things to sell. Just like the fact that there have been lightbulbs that will burn basically forever but no one will release them because they want you to keep buying. They want you to buy it so it will burn out and you can buy it again. Strange analogy maybe but hopefully it makes my point. Consumption is what they want.

Either way the future of domaining and the net is going to be very intersting and i just hope the great group of people here in the namepros community can work together to take advantage of wherever the future may take us! Good luck to you all! I hope we can make some profits and have some fun together!

:wave:

 

[Steven]

I've seen steady growth of .com since the 90s.
Yes, .com is the king as it has been driven by many end users.
Ultimately, if a lot of end users revert to their own tld one by one with new end users using their own tld (not needing to buy .com for a high price from domainer or domain owner), what we may have is just domainer to domainer selling ... and we know how that will end up.
That is the main concern I have with this.

This smells like confusion and dilution to me. The more you dilute extension names it seems the more .com will remain king especially because people will be so confused with dots being placed everywhere..... And in fact i think it smells mostly of greed by icaan. Why would Coke need to have a .cola extension when they could have any website they want with *****.coke.com?

IMO the only real thing that will hurt .com would be if there was an extension that didnt have an extension! you want to go to Coke's website? Type in coke, thats it. no more need for .com .net .stupidextensionnamehere. But that will never happen because then they'd eventually run out of things to sell. Just like the fact that there have been lightbulbs that will burn basically forever but no one will release them because they want you to keep buying. They want you to buy it so it will burn out and you can buy it again. Strange analogy maybe but hopefully it makes my point. Consumption is what they want.

Either way the future of domaining and the net is going to be very intersting and i just hope the great group of people here in the namepros community can work together to take advantage of wherever the future may take us! Good luck to you all! I hope we can make some profits and have some fun together!

:wave:

 

[mwzd]

I think just the word without a tld was done a few years back by a company called RealNames...

Were no takers then... ahead of its time by a few decades at least...

Eventually... who knows... btw type coke in your browser and see what happens

 

[martinisky]

ahhh look at that! interesting! the more i thought about it the more that i realized that for billboards etc and advertisements (obviously except giant brands such as coke) you need a way to give out your internet address.... having a commercial for Bob's Burger Joint it needs to say BobsBurgerJoint.com somewhere so people know that in fact Bob does have an internet presence.. For smaller companies and more obscure names of companies, having a .com somewhere on their billboard/tv ad, etc does show that they are in fact online and helps distinguish the fact they have a website vs. not having an extension at all.... so maybe i am wrong... maybe extensions are need to justify that particular businesses are in fact online.

I think just the word without a tld was done a few years back by a company called RealNames...

Were no takers then... ahead of its time by a few decades at least...

Eventually... who knows... btw type coke in your browser and see what happens

 

[npcomplete]

This smells like confusion and dilution to me. The more you dilute extension names it seems the more .com will remain king especially because people will be so confused with dots being placed everywhere..... And in fact i think it smells mostly of greed by icaan. Why would Coke need to have a .cola extension when they could have any website they want with *****.coke.com?

IMO the only real thing that will hurt .com would be if there was an extension that didnt have an extension! you want to go to Coke's website? Type in coke, thats it. no more need for .com .net .stupidextensionnamehere. But that will never happen because then they'd eventually run out of things to sell. Just like the fact that there have been lightbulbs that will burn basically forever but no one will release them because they want you to keep buying. They want you to buy it so it will burn out and you can buy it again. Strange analogy maybe but hopefully it makes my point. Consumption is what they want.

Either way the future of domaining and the net is going to be very intersting and i just hope the great group of people here in the namepros community can work together to take advantage of wherever the future may take us! Good luck to you all! I hope we can make some profits and have some fun together!

:wave:

The dns system is by design a hierarchical distributed database. What that means is that during dns resolution, the process begins at the end with the implied "." (dot).

Try this experiment:

http://www.namepros.com./
http://www.namepros.com./domain-name-discussion/

Notice the "." after the com? That is the implied address of the root servers. Basically, the root servers (.) point to the tld servers for .com, .net, and all other .gtld and .cctld. Then the tld servers point to the second level domains, like namepros. This is done at higher levels of the namespace hierarchy too. So resolution goes like this:

. (find the root servers)
com (get com address from root servers)
namepros (get namepros address from the com tld server)
...etc...


This makes the dns system scalable, and ensures reasonable performance. Now suppose that we flatten the entire namespace and remove the hierarchy... i.e., suppose we just let http://coke resolve as-is. First of all, that is entirely possible, but not smart. I have even set up things like this in the "alternate root" for fun, and had alt-root tld's resolve to a web page. The reason that it is possible but "not smart" is that it would force a lot of traffic directly onto the root servers (a bad thing). It sounds nice, but the solution is not scalable.

 

[Hurley4540]

Interesting :o

 

[JAugusto]

Sell, Sell, Panic Sell

 

[treebytheriver]

Seriously, I think it's no reason to panic at all.

here's a couple other articles about it:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39437739,00.htm?r=5
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/22/business/net23.php?page=1

 

[onlinedomains00]

Sell, Sell, Panic Sell

are you trying to be funny? serious topic

 

[domainar]

The original BBC article was a little vague.

Are we talking about coke being a domain name and extension all together (e.g. http:// coke)?

Or, coke making up their own extension (e.g. coca.cola)?

In the second case, how could one company "claim" one extension over another?

Would pepsi.cola also work? Or would coke own the .cola?

This is a little confusing; but probably seems more dire than it really is ...or

 

[Rob J]

ICANN gives far too many Internet users too much credit...

I don't think you give internet users enough credit. A whole generation of people already grew up with the internet and are having kids who are growing up inundated with technology. Most kids by age 10 have a laptop and a cell phone. Hell even the old people like my parents are getting the hang of it.

Maybe 10-15 years ago most people were naive newbies who thought websites always ended in .com, that not true anymore and becomes less true every day.

 

[mwzd]

Sell, Sell, Panic Sell

I'm buying single word .coms at reg fee... feel free to pm me. Even cvcv.com / quad premium .com etc...

There's no panic tbh, it will take a considerable amount of money... not to mention tech to own your own TLD.... at least in the near future. Assuming the figure Kevin Ham paid for .cm is correct you're looking at $50 million approx + annual management costs.

Its easy to become a registrar today (well, easier) but how many people are? Less than 1k if I count it right - http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html and this is out of a total online population of 1.3 Billion!

 

[nrmillions]

People like to say that .mobi will be outdated because of technology but even domain names all together might not exist in the future if technology advances. As technology changes with search engines and other things people might not even directly type domains in anymore. I'm sure to start in the future we will see similar things to dotworlds.net where you can reg in front and after the dot such as getting the domain real.estate and new.york and coca.cola

Eventually .com could seem like ancient history. I'm not saying this is going to happen within the next few years but eventually. Things could move from regging both sides of the dot to not even using domains at all in the future. Anyone who thinks 100% that for all eternity people will be using domain names with .com as king is crazy. Technology is constantly evolving and we didnt even have the web until the 1990's which wasnt very long ago at all.

 

[cityforums.com]

IF this goes through ... it WILL hurt alot of domainers big and small. :td:

 

[netfleet]

It looks to me, this will only strenghten .com as the most desired extension

I couldn't disagree more... values of all domains are largely dictated by supply and demand. .com domains that have risen in value have only done so becaues more and more people are using the web (increased demand) and supply is limited (finite number of reasonable domain names).

As Paul Twomey said, "It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet"

This will increase supply drastically and give potential buyers a range of 10's or 100's of 1,000's of extensions to choose from. Sure .com would be the best (and always be so IMO) but with so many alternatives, .com values are going to have to seriously move to be competitive.

One thging that would be certain if this does take place is an unimaginable amount of confusion within the inetrnet using public and a massive s**tfight between competing TM holders and cybersquatters as each extension becomes available.

 

[GreenGambler]

This is something that I"ve thought about for a LONG time. IT is all, crazy, cool and sucky at the same time. lol I think change is good and as said, .com will always be king, however this will take a LOT of money out of the .com market and put it into these new emerging markets.

 

[dgridley]

What it boils down to is the registrars are in it for the buck.. domainers will be hurt bad initially by this turn of events tho eventually we may see it settle out at levels much lower than they are now. I think it will even the playing field. We may not see so much in the way of parking or speculation and it may mean we'll see more in the way of development because domains will be affordable.

 

[wot]

"The plan would also allow for the new domain names to be internationalised, and so could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages. "


Wonder what they would call them

 

[metronome]

not sure about http://coca.cola or http://coke.cola, they look kinda akward.
but if they can buy http://coke or http://pepsi, then it will has great effect on .com I guess.

 

[Beachie]

GTLDs require physical infrastructure so, as the article points out, owning your own extension won't be something that everyone can afford. I think we'll just end up with a few more irrelevant extensions that no-one knows about. Who here has ever visited a .travel, .pro, .aero or .museum? When a few new extensions fail, the idea will die off, because there won't be enough investors willing to gamble ICANNs approval fees and on-going costs.

I can't see eBay wasting their time with .ebay - they already have the option of using books.ebay.com or ebay.com/books - why confuse the consumer even more and dilute their brand?

ICANN seems to be making moves to prevent phishing scams, but this just opens a Pandora's box of confusion..

If in doubt, people will type .com

 

[autotim]

This simply means that webusers will forget even trying to remember a TLD and instead rely more and more on search engines to find what they want. Look at the top searches on key words on any search engine and you will find that people use google to navigate to msn or yahoo! Already they cannot be bothered to enter a full website address and this development means they have even more reason not to bother. TLD's are about to become mostly irrelvent. Revenues from direct navigation are about to disappear altogether. Direct navigation traffic is way below 1% anyway and goes mostly to parked pages that google now allows advertisers to opt out of. So, you can expect all but the very very best .com names to fall in value and all secondary or emerging .com names (geo or otherwise) bought for appreciation/parked revenues to fall hugely. Take a look at Dark Blue in Aussie. Seems like they're now projecting less than USD10 per doman per year for parked domains....which hardly covers costs. The future for domainers could be very bleak indeed. Expect to see lots of drops very soon. Develop your domains or lose money - it really is that simple now. Oh, maybe you can hedge your losses by buying google and yahoo on dips (even at 50x eps!) because they are the real ones that will benefit from this huge huge development.