- Impact
- 41,064
April 1, 2019
BREAKING -- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING-- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING
It has just been revealed the the .com domain extension will be retired. Current registrants will be allowed to continue to use their domain names until the current expiration date, or for 12 months from today, whichever comes first, but no new registrations, transfers or renewals will be possible.
It appears this drastic move came about because a top executive happened to look in a dictionary and discovered that com is a prefix as a part of speech. Therefore it was semantically incorrect to use it after a name. It is not clear why no one realized this for decades. An unnamed source close to the situation said "...we were all living in the .com bubble."
Once ICANN were informed that the .com TLD was not congruent with accepted language use, emergency meetings at an undisclosed location took place. These secret meetings at an undisclosed resort in Florida apparently included ICANN, Verisign, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and industry leaders. There are conflicting reports whether domain investors were included in the meetings.
Some long term investors have had their net worth eliminated overnight. One well known early .com domain investor was taking it in a surprisingly positive way. "Don't worry folks, I can start all over." At the time he made that remark, however, he mistakenly thought there was a .chicken TLD and he was angry when told there was not. However, he was reported to have registered more than 20,000 .horse domains in just hours as a substitute.
At the same time as ICANN announced the retirement of .com they also announced that going forward they would approve prefix domains, and the first prefix domains would be called com. That is domains like com.NamePros would be available starting April 1, 2020. All domains with fewer than 63 characters would be considered registry premium, and offered at prices of $200,000 and up. Names up to 63 characters in length are allowed. That is the only non-premium domain names will be exactly 63 characters long. Domain investors were working hard to find great 63 character names.
As off this time many of the other legacy extensions, including .net and .info, were not impacted.
Stock values saw wild fluctuations as the impact of this decision became evident. We expect additional details as the story unfolds.
BREAKING -- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING-- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING
Check out the tags for the topic for additional information.
Got other breaking news from today, April 1, 2019 -- please share it in this thread!
BREAKING -- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING-- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING
It has just been revealed the the .com domain extension will be retired. Current registrants will be allowed to continue to use their domain names until the current expiration date, or for 12 months from today, whichever comes first, but no new registrations, transfers or renewals will be possible.
It appears this drastic move came about because a top executive happened to look in a dictionary and discovered that com is a prefix as a part of speech. Therefore it was semantically incorrect to use it after a name. It is not clear why no one realized this for decades. An unnamed source close to the situation said "...we were all living in the .com bubble."
Once ICANN were informed that the .com TLD was not congruent with accepted language use, emergency meetings at an undisclosed location took place. These secret meetings at an undisclosed resort in Florida apparently included ICANN, Verisign, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and industry leaders. There are conflicting reports whether domain investors were included in the meetings.
Some long term investors have had their net worth eliminated overnight. One well known early .com domain investor was taking it in a surprisingly positive way. "Don't worry folks, I can start all over." At the time he made that remark, however, he mistakenly thought there was a .chicken TLD and he was angry when told there was not. However, he was reported to have registered more than 20,000 .horse domains in just hours as a substitute.
At the same time as ICANN announced the retirement of .com they also announced that going forward they would approve prefix domains, and the first prefix domains would be called com. That is domains like com.NamePros would be available starting April 1, 2020. All domains with fewer than 63 characters would be considered registry premium, and offered at prices of $200,000 and up. Names up to 63 characters in length are allowed. That is the only non-premium domain names will be exactly 63 characters long. Domain investors were working hard to find great 63 character names.
As off this time many of the other legacy extensions, including .net and .info, were not impacted.
Stock values saw wild fluctuations as the impact of this decision became evident. We expect additional details as the story unfolds.
BREAKING -- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING-- BREAKING--BREAKING -- BREAKING
Check out the tags for the topic for additional information.
Got other breaking news from today, April 1, 2019 -- please share it in this thread!
