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new gtlds Giant KPMG Abandons .COM for its BRAND TLD

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Bob Hawkes

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Kevin Murphy (of Domain Incite) just blogged about accounting giant KPMG that has now moved from their .com (that was just their 4 letter acronym) to their .kpmg brand TLD.

"The company recently announced that it is now using home.kpmg as its primary web site domain, replacing kpmg.com. URLs on the old .com address now bounce users to the equivalent page on .kpmg. Web searches for KPMG return the .kpmg domain as the top hit."

KPMG is one of the 4 largest international accounting firms. The company alluded to the security advantages against phishing in their release. In the most recent year they had revenue of about $29 billion.

"The move enhances the KPMG brand through a strong, simplified name, and provides end users with a level of assurance that any site that ends with .kpmg is owned and operated by KPMG."

You can read Kevin's full post at this link:

http://domainincite.com/24144-kpmg-dumps-com-for-dot-brand-gtld

I can see brand TLDs being most used in areas like banking, insurance, accounting, legal, etc. where the hazards of a user responding to a phishing attempt are most severe.

Bob
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
It costs $185,000 just to file the form to have your own gTLD.
 
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It costs $185,000 just to file the form to have your own gTLD.
And on the other end of the spectrum, most ntld haters say there are too many existing.
 
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ask them how much for the .com. I guarantee they’d never sell it.
 
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ask them how much for the .com. I guarantee they’d never sell it.
Agreed. It would be crazy to think about giving up control of it!
 
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And on the other end of the spectrum, most ntld haters say there are too many existing.

Yes there are too many... .kpmg .barclays .apple etc will exist and flourish... but .car .cars .auto .vehicle .4wheeler .engine . bike .bikes .nonsense .hopeless .etc .etc will not flourish much...

Also you cannot buy and resale any .kmpg domain.. when we talk about flourishing, we talk about the resellability in premium domain market.
 
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Lol! You are just making things up. 4wheeler? I don't think so. Trying to subtly instill a sense of total ridiculousness to ntld's here? I was merely pointing out that while some balk at the price, others think it should stop. You fix that by increasing the price or stop the program all together. I say, why stop it? It's secure, as you say, having a private gtld. What's your point exactly? Resell-ability in premium domain market? How find premium domain market, dark web?
 
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I wonder what email addresses they’ll be using....

Have your fun KPMG.
 
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I wonder what email addresses they’ll be using....
As virtually every company does these days they use a secure site form at https://home.kpmg/ rather than give out an email address at all as far as I could see. All of the financial, insurance, etc. companies I deal with do the same (do not accept email transactions). I presume that for internal purposes they do use .kpmg email accounts now.
Bob
 
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"The move enhances the KPMG brand through a strong, simplified name, and provides end users with a level of assurance that any site that ends with .kpmg is owned and operated by KPMG."

That quote is probably the best sales pitch for brandTLD's since the program began.

It's important to note that ngTLD's and brandTLD's, while technically similar, and pretty much officially the same, they are indeed completely different things for the most part in how they will be used.

ngTLD's are made TO BE businesses (or at least try to be .. lol)
brandTLD's are made FOR businesses

The cost of operating a brandTLD for KPMG is likely 0.01% of what they pay for digital security every year .. so if it saves them even 1%, then they are winning big.

For years everyone seems to have been waiting for a so called breakout "moment" for ngTLD's .. I'm not sure if this is it .. but it is very VERY significant in that KPMG deals with thousands of very large and influencial companies all over the world who will all be exposed to a ngTLD awareness moment .. whether this is enough to get a little closer to the critical mass ngTLD's need to really take off isn't very obvious .. but don't fool yourselves .. this is a one massive step forward (*>IF<* it sticks). VASTLY more significant than a .McDonalds or .Nike or anything of the sort.




I wonder what email addresses they’ll be using.
As virtually every company does these days they use a secure site form at https://home.kpmg/ rather than give out an email address at all as far as I could see.

I'm pretty sure what he means is for interacting with existing clients .. a company like KPMG could never just have a web portal for communications.

Technically .. they can theoretically have "dotless" emails like bob@kpmg .. but I'm pretty sure most email clients will spit out errors all day long when it comes to dotless email (at least for the foreseeable future) ... my guess is that they will likely use bob@(e)mail.kpmg .. or probably just keep using [email protected], as in theory they don't need to change their emails from .com at all.



Have your fun KPMG.
While I'm saying this is a huge win for ngTLD's .. I'll agree that it's a big unknown for KPMG themselves. It's a big risky step. But the very perception itself of being technology leaders could actually be what they're going for here. $185k is a bargain for them if it enhances their image even 1%! That being said .. if they have any glitches it could all crash down on them and hurt their image .. so while it seems like this headline is coming out of nowhere .. it's probably something they looked into for quite some time looking at the pros and cons far beyond the obvious security/technical aspects.
 
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Well i am sure they believe they're finally on the "right" side of the dot.
 
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too good for .com
way to go for them. Moving forward can be scary for most people. But there will be brands that are bold enough to take the right step forward. Ignorance is not marketable forever, and that is really all .com is.


.com
- because our customers are too stupid to get any other email correct.. and probably always will be... forever...
 
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Interesting move by them.

One advantage to this is if people start using this domain in anger, they won't be typosquatted and they can't be cybersquatted.

If every brand did this (they won't because of the ridiculous cost), but if they did then they may feel less inclined to need to buy up all of the TLDs as defensive registrations.
 
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Thanks for your well thought out and expressed post @Ategy.com.

Re the email question
I'm pretty sure what he means is for interacting with existing clients
for me an existing customer of big financial institutions, for some time they have refused to interact with customers via email due to security concerns. All communication is via a secure portal with form inside my account. They may use email to tell you there is a new communication, but the communication itself is not by email. This is similar to what CRA do.

For those interested I came across this site on .brand adoption stats (not sure that whoever ran it is still updating). It is interesting that the most active companies are the auto sector ones although I would see the biggest benefits being in financial sectors.

https://dotbrandobservatory.com/

Bob
 
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Exact-match domains still get a ranking boost at Bing and Yahoo. With hundreds of available extensions, a scammer could still set up a website on KPMG.whatever and send out spam emails to audit clients making It appear as though the emails came from the firm. It is likely the firm has already made defensive registrations in many extensions. I recall checking a couple years a client' s usage of newer extensions. They had dozens but none of the ones I checked even resolved - just wasted resources the registries are extracting from brands to protect trademarks.
 
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To see this as a "Boost" for ngTLD's is very premature. some good reasons mentioned as to why the took the step but in effect it's not even up there with a major corporation renaming themselves, which happens on a fairly regular basis.

I agree there is definitely more of a likely-hood of more major companies following KPMG's route. Therefore the general public are also more likely to associate ngTLD's with major corporations (Exact match) Further sidelining general words (as an extension and with words before the dot) as just a copy-cat ploy. Yes, in effect the reverse of the real time line of actual events.

Just as they view the .net, .info etc etc as a second rate extension (to attempt to emulate) the COM and CCtld's. What I'm trying to clarify is that If it's only major corporations that bring ngTLDs to the publics awareness (with ownership of their own extensions) then that's more likely to be all they (the general public) associate them with
 
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KPMG had many corruption-scandals in the past...

https://anticorruptiondigest.com/news-topics/kpmg/


You think they really have a clue of what they are doing ? :xf.grin:

All banks have corruption scandals. USA always sue our big banks for millions at a time. It's just a slap on the wrist usually then swept under the rug. Now maybe KPMG is worse, but banking is a dirty business and always prone to someone taking advantage of their position.
 
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a so called breakout "moment" for ngTLD's .. I'm not sure if this is it .. but it is very VERY significant in that KPMG deals with thousands of very large and influencial companies all over the world
I agree that it is significant for the reason you cite, businesses will see a non-legacy non-cc TLD in use by a big name business they interact with. However, I don't think this alone will be a tipping point.

I think it will help the (arguably) struggling .brand effort to see an adoption on this scale. I think the fact that they are largely doing this not because they could not get the name they want in legacy, or some other reason, but rather for security purposes - once their clients and staff understand that it must end in .kpmg to be sure it is KPMG, there is enhanced protection (agree nothing is perfect) from phishing attempts. In my mind they are using a .brand for the one reason that makes sense.

KPMG is huge - for reasons that I don't understand the big 4 auditing firms are not eligible for the Fortune Global 500 list due to their structure, but if they were KPMG would be about 110 on that list. Their revenue is just under $30 billion. They are the auditors for about 25% of the Fortune 500 companies. They have local presence in almost every city around the world, even my little city here. It is significant.

The adoption of .brand domain names could ultimately be bad for domainers, whether they are in new, legacy or country code extensions. That said, due to cost, I think .brand will never make sense for anything other than the high tip of companies with significant client base and in areas where security is important. Possibly if .brand takes off it will be the very high end of market that will suffer most, but that is way down the road imho.

It is interesting that adoption of websites on brands seems way higher in Europe. There are about 5x as many operating .brand websites in Germany than in the USA in the last survey I saw. I think both new and .brand TLDs will find better traction outside the USA in the near term.

Bob
 
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While they're saying it's a protection/security thing .. and there is an element to that .. the more I think about it, the more it really is much more about an image/marketing thing.

Rebranding always gets people talking .. and this is a perfect way to get the same attention without actually re-branding .. but in a way it is a virtual rebranding (they don't have the hassle of changing all their stationary .. and all their buildings ... lol).

Also .. the marketing effect of simply making the "claim" of making things more secure for their clients is a really really big deal for a company in the business(es) of KPMG. Significantly more than it "actually" being more secure (particularly since we don't know if they will even be changing their emails).

In general for large companies email typos probably account for 10x the number of security issues than their domain. Half of that or more likely being internal emails. Mind you, that number is less for shorter simpler company names. While there might be people who put in a wrong letter or wrong order for K P M G, this change from kpmg.com to .kpmg won't really change that part of it. Although I suspect there will be analogue "typo" security issues if they do indeed change their emails without keeping the old format and all new variants as redirects.

Effectively they would need to have a catch all SLD to forward everything ...

IE:
Your new email is [email protected]
But bob@[anything].kpmg (bob@*.kpmg), bob@kpmg and [email protected] would all forward to you


There is a reason why huge companies are always a version or two behind on their versions of Windows or other major software. It's because they simply cannot risk any stability issues. They wait for the rest of the world to effectively re-re-re-beta test the software for years .. then they finally take the step once it's almost guaranteed to be stable.

In the same way if it were strictly about security, they would likely be on the tail end of companies going to their .brand .. and in fact, with the recent companies cancelling their .brands, they likely should have waited if it was about security. Although the big difference with those companies is that they got their brandTLD mainly for consumer facing marketing reasons (and like defensive reasons in that they were afraid of the unknown), plus not wanting to regret being left out of the trend if brandTLD's really took off (because who knows when the 2nd round of ngTLD's is going to be at this point .. lol). KPMG is mostly business facing .. so ironically their reliance on their choice of specific domain (in terms of marketing reasons) is less of a factor than a consumer facing company.


Remember that smart companies who plan ahead will always use these types of changes as an excuse to reach out and communicate with their clients .. with an end result of securing sales and tightening their business relationships with their clients.


All that said .. yes indeed this is really bad for domainers IF it sticks. Particularly for one word .com's targeted by $50+ million/year companies who can easily afford and justify their own brandTLD. But I think that's more longer term .. for at least the next 5 and likely 10-15 years they are still going to want the .com for email functionality .. and at least 10-15++ years for defensive purposes.

But at the end of the day this isn't about KPMG ... this is about all the CEOs and CMOs of hundreds of large corporations all over the world noticing the change and asking their respective CTOs what the heck brandTLD's are all about. If they are smart .. the CEOs and CTOs will also recognise the marketing opportunity .. and if even 5-10% make similar changes in the next 2-3 years then it will have a major affect for ngTLD's .. particularly if the next round of ngTLD's is announced sooner rather than later.

If I was in charge of promoting and growing the ngTLD program overall ... given the choice of having all four .coke, .nike, .mcdonalds and .disney using their brandTLDs .. OR .KPMG ... my choice would be .KPMG because of the implications in the business world. I mean .. has anyone ever even gone to coke.com? No customers rarely ever need to go there .. how many customers ever sent an email to [email protected]? The numbers are tiny compared to a business like KPMG .. and not only are they smaller volume, but the business clout of those visits are themselves significantly smaller compared to KPMG.

All that said .. the real question is .. is it enough to truly launch to the vital critical mass of use of ngTLD's that the ngTLD program needs to truly be a relevant and viable alternative to .com and ccTLD's? To which the answer is obviously not on it's own ... so the ACTUAL real question is .. what (if anything) will be the domino effect? The answer to that is pretty hard to tell as a large influencing factor will be how KPMG announces the changes to it's customers and how they roll it out ... and .. equally important is how the CEOs of KPMG's clients perceive the potential benefits (particularly if they see this more of a marketing move than a technology/security move).
 
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While they're saying it's a protection/security thing .. and there is an element to that .. the more I think about it, the more it really is much more about an image/marketing thing.
I am not convinced that security with respect to phishing was not their prime motivation, but you might be right that it was for a brand/marketing leg up over their main rivals. For example another of the Big 4 global accounting giants, Deloitte, has started to use their .brand TLD although as far as I can see only for redirection to various pages on their .com site.

It appears that many of the .brand are using the word home with their .brand TLD as their main site - e.g.
http://home.deloitte/ although not universally so. Hopefully a standard evolves.

Bob
 
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ask them how much for the .com. I guarantee they’d never sell it.

So they will just be "cyber squatters with it" (y)(y)(y)
 
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Verisign and .com fanatics must be panicking after this move

They don't accept competition and they don't want to get on board...they are just doing and saying all they can to make new gtlds fail.

In the meantime they are all rushing to sell their .coms before the end user becomes more aware of new gtlds and how they can complement their .coms just like the kpmg scenario.

to be continued...!
 
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KPMG really think their name sounds cool? Funny acronym only made popular by big dollars
 
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