discuss A worldwide shift away from .com

[MapleDots]

A worldwide shift away from .com?

Could it be?


I'm going to say that ccTLD's as a single entity are now the most relevant extensions period.
If you look at the UK, Germany, China, Russia, India, and Canada the ccTLD's are more widely used than the .com's.

There are a few exceptions like apple who will use apple.com/ca instead of apple.ca but the vast majority of companies like BestBuy.com will use BestBuy.ca for Canada. It absolutely shocks me at how dominant .ca is in Canada.

As the oldest extension .com's continue to have the biggest resale value but if you were to add up the sheer number of all ccTLD's they would easily surpass .com registrations.

So because each country code is unique the ccTLD's can never have the same numbers of registrations as the .com's but if you were to consider all the ccTLD's as one extension they would comfortably surpass .com registrations.

I think the trend of ccTLD's will continue on an upward scale, I think .com has plateaued and will only see nominal growth moving forward. ccTLD's will continue to grow as each countries economy grows and becomes more connected.

As a Canadian, when I do a google search I don't even look at .com's because I want to shop in Canadian dollars and same goes for people from Russia, China, UK etc.

As the Trumps of the world alienate other countries you will see more of a shift away from .com as other countries try to distance themselves from the USA.

Take Canada as a for instance.... the greatest ally the USA has ever had and Trump blew off Canadians as if they were yesterday's news, slapping tariffs on their goods and basically saying very inappropriate things about their leader. By comparisons other countries have been very reserved to bring any criticisms towards the USA. It is undeniable though that the populations of each country are feeling more and more alienated by the usa and because .com is perceived as being dominantly U.S. the entire future of the extension will see limited growth as other countries bring in protective measures for their economies.

So I personally think the future growth of the .com industry is directly linked to how open the US economy is. With Tariffs on other countries there will be repercussions and the .com's will slowly start to erode as other countries shy away from anything that could even remotely be considered american.

Please try to keep this a civil discussion and understand that you cannot look at the .com from yesterday, we are looking at times that are very different where most countries are looking seriously at protecting their own economies by asking the population to shop local products. A .com will NEVER be a local address unless it is in the USA.

In closing..... it is entirely feasible that another extension like .global could eventually become the new international extension for companies as the world distances itself from the USA. Will it be .global, .international, .business etc.... that is anyone's guess but I can tell you for sure, a lot of companies will second guess relying on a .com for local commerce.

 

[Kate]

Not at all, Saturation drives people to cctlds and ngtlds, and any other option available that best suits their needs when the .com is unavailable.

nTLDs yes.
ccTLDs no - most of the time. That is why many domains registered in ccTLDs are still available in .com.
That's what we said earlier in this thread, Dutch, Polish names etc are relevant in their home extensions, not much in .com.

Anybody who doubts the power of ccTLDs should travel more, and look at what extensions the locals use in their daily life.

What is true though, is that there are ccTLD holders who want to acquire the .com at some point, for example because they are expanding overseas or need to raise their profile. But it's not the majority. A good number will register the .com if they can because it's nice to have, many don't bother.
Even the big (US) companies that use .com have to use ccTLDs to serve the markets where they are active.

 

[Recons.Com]

In closing..... it is entirely feasible that another extension like .global could eventually become the new international extension for companies

I have not said .global is replacing .com

 

[OwnedWords]

Hey op, check your opinions against facts....out of the 10 fastest growing(2017-2018) CANADIAN retail companies 8 of them use .COM as their primary domain.

..and btw CAN barely breaks into the top 10 global ecommerce markets(nearly half the market of next on the list: S.Korea) so whatever's done there isn't a reasonable reflection of global movement. Localized traffic/consumer segmenting is largely done to for reason of limited payment and shipping options. Nothing to do with a choice of ccTLD, it's a convenient means to an end.

Seriously.. the only people on the planet worse than us in the US at overestimating their global importance has to be Canadians! (except maybe in Hockey; )

 

[Brands.International]

If you take a look here
http://www.janrezab.com/list-of-top-czech-technology-companies-and-start-ups-updated/
Not only do many of the tech companies and start ups in Czech Republic use dot com (or used it until they were bought out by US dot com using companies ) but the Czech blog listing the companies is a dot com itself!

Using terms like “no one” marks you for the same ridicule that MapleDots is experiencing here although he’s so stubborn that he keeps mindlessly repeating the same incorrect fallacies. There is no “worldwide shift.”

@xynames will all the respect, do not make me laugh. I live here and I know what Czech companies are using in TV, bilboards, streets, radio, in every day live...they simply do not use .com, period. They use local ccTLD, .cz.

It is nice that you were able to google some link, but that can not alter my direct every day experience. Thanks for understanding

 

[garptrader]

Hosterstats provides the number of .Com registrations (Mar 2018) by country:

China ~12.0 million
Germany ~8.1 million
Canada ~8.5 million
India ~4.3 million
Japan ~2.6 million
France ~2.5 million
UK ~2.2 million
Etc

It might be interesting to compare .Com registrations by country against the number of cctld registrations in those countries.

 

[Keith]

Here’s the bottom line, and it’s so simple!

The entire world knows .com. Small pockets of the world know country codes like .cn, .ca...

You choose which way you want to go. You can market to all, or some!

 

[Chris Hydrick]

Hosterstats provides the number of .Com registrations (Mar 2018) by country:

China ~12.0 million
Germany ~8.1 million
Canada ~8.5 million
India ~4.3 million
Japan ~2.6 million
France ~2.5 million
UK ~2.2 million
Etc

It might be interesting to compare .Com registrations by country against the number of cctld registrations in those countries.

Do you know if those stats are based off of WHOIS registrant country OR registrar country?

Looking at HosterStats, the first column tracks the amount of registrars per country. I'm wondering if HosterStats is basing their data based off of registrar location. eg. All domains regged at [GoDaddy for instance] are included as USA.

If that's the case, than this probably isn't an accurate study. WHOIS location wouldn't be entirely accurate either given WHOIS privacy would skew results towards popular WHOIS privacy companies WHOIS country.

Take for instance Cayman Islands [#12 on HosterStats] with 2+ million domains registered in March 2018. Yet, they have a population of roughly 60,000 people. Are these stats reflective of Uni as a registrar, or do Cayman Island residents register a lot of domains?

 

[Keith]

So the point is?

ccTLD's will only be marketed in the area from where you reside, I have never said different.

I said that ccTLD's as a group, so all the different countries using them combined like .ca .mx .uk .de .ru .cn etc are giving .com a run for the money. A singular extension has no chance to out number that many ccTLD's, it is only a question of time before the ccTLD's combined will overshadow .coms

I don't know why members are seeing that as a bad thing, I'm not putting down .com's. if anything it shows their strength because it is only when combined as a whole that ccTLD's can overshadow the .com's.

So why worry..... there is no need, .com is strong and always will be but even the best boxer in the world cannot win against hundreds. That does not take away from the greatness of the boxer.

See the point?

I’ll tell you why it’s a bad thing. A CC tld vs .com is like selling a product to a few hundred people vs a few million. Nobody in their right mind would opt to sell to a tiny audience.

 

[Keith]

The only people that promote cc domains are those that invested too much and are afraid to get burned.

 

[TERADOMAIN]

The only people that promote cc domains are those that invested too much and are afraid to get burned.

I agree with you.

I like to add one more important fact. I do not know from where OP came up with figure from India. Lets visit the fact instead of promoting some wrong info here.

India will be one of the very huge growing market for lots of new start up as well as 95% of existing companies in India does not operate website matching their business name. Its changing since last couple years. Huge awareness is there. Lots of companies in India advertise on TV with their website name which matching their brand name. Since last couple years we will see Lots of sign boards of GODADDY on boundaries of Cricket match in India.

.com is number 1 choice in India.

Why & When companies in India do chose .in or .co.in

• When .com not available for sale
• When .com not affordable to the company in its initial stage

Ultimately if budget allow them and if .com is for sale within their reach then they will upgrade to .com

BestBuy or any other companies does not operate local TLD recently. They have been running since many years. Nothing new in that. Title of this thread is totally misleading.

We understand you are big fan of .ca and you hold large portfolio of .ca. We need to present fact to stay relevant in life. Credibility is very important. People are not dumb they will figure out if our intention. They will figure out motive behind out act.

Show me 1 example where company has 2 choices where .com is $500 and .ca is $5000 and still they buy .ca first and did not touch .com ... There are so many variables in play.

.com is king not because of domainers. .com is king because of 90% of people by default will relate some memorable brand name with .com and ultimately will try to visit .com after few months. This is reality. .com is default extension for most globally.

Thanks

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

@Vito @nicholas.
In countries like Canada. All you see is .ca.
If you are a business, you need a .ca, otherwise you are screwed when it comes to reaching Canadian customers.
I dont know for Germany and .de, like if theres a mix of .com and .de, but in Canada, theres no mix of .com and .ca. No .ca, no business.

In other countries where the cctld is not established, yes the cctld as well as ngtlds can be used when the .com is saturated.

Tweed is doing good with tweed.com not the .ca
Even our government run cannabis store is on .com I am sure they get business.
I have 108 .ca and 102 .com and do believe as time goes on, and there is a severe shortage of good .com that Canadians will start using .ca more, which they should.
I am looking through cira factbook, I read before 70% of canadian business still using .com and i will find that page again.
NapaCanada.com NAPA auto parts, they doing ok with no .ca
Lordco.ca goes to .com should be other way around
wyattparts.com I buy stuff from them, maybe you should reg the .ca and tell them how they need it so badly. Windoms
You cant run a world wide business .on a cctld
You can run a local business on a .com
Maple is right again, to be a worldwide business, you really do need the country codes
Telus.ca goes to telus.com shifting.away

 

[JudgeMind]

96% of my annual sales are strictly .com, in most cases companies want both the .com and the cctld

 

[MapleDots]

For all the newbies.....

ccTLD stands for Country Code Top Level Domain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain

 

[Hootsifer]

.com .... even your grandma knows it. But CC and gT definiely have become more viable.

 

[garptrader]

I am sure it varies from city to city. Large cities with international tourism (such as Cartagena) might be more prone to using .Com because tourists and international real estate investors or business people will feel more comfortable with .Com than a foreign extension. Perhaps in smaller towns which are more remote a cctld will be more common. Certainly in Latin America one will often find heavy usage of social media accounts without any domain name or website at all.

 

[johnnie018]

Cctlds have barely being growing for years, good luck with the .ca wishful thinking.

 

[johnnie018]

“Total country-code TLD (ccTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 149.3 million at the end of the third quarter of 2018, a decrease of approximately 0.5 million domain name registrations, or 0.3 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2018.1,2 ccTLDs increased by approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.2 percent, year over year.1,2”

Not good numbers and cctlds have been going nowhere for years.

 

[wwwweb]

I think ultimately what China and India do as their economies take more and more of the world market will have the biggest impact on whether .com remains dominant. As I understand it so far in China most companies seeking global markets have stuck with .com. I think country codes will stay strong in Europe and Canada (and some other places). I think .com will always be strong. What I am less sure of is whether it will continue to be almost (not quite) as big as everything else combined.

Although his argument was based more around censorship, this article from the co-founder of Google that the Internet would split into two parts within 10 years, one US led and one China led, is at least interesting reading.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol...predicts-china-will-cause-internet-split-two/

If I had a choice, I would personally prefer a domain extension that:

• Was not ultimately controlled by the government of any country (that rules out the generic country codes, as well as .net and .com)
• Was not operated as a for-profit business by any company (that rules out virtually all of the ngTLDs)
• Had long term promises with respect to renewal costs.
• Has the respect of the world.
• Is operated as a sort of co-operative by all of those who are invested in it (somewhat like the CIRA model)

The first two leave me with I think only a handful of ngTLDs run by nonprofits (but they are all narrowly focussed and the next two considerations on my list rule them out) and to some degree .org. I only have 2 .org in my portfolio currently, but based on how it has done in real world use in last decade, how it is managed, and sales data from last year, my New Year's Resolution is to look for niches where .org makes sense and pick up more of them.

Thanks for the informative and well argued points, everyone.

Bob

Many of the gtlds run by special
interest, or non profit are restrictive, therefore will never be able to market their existsance to the general public, or even within their own industry. They will never get enough attention to gain traction, .com is default which is why even 50 cent at the .club launch party when he was doing his speech said .com for the web URL which was a total cluster duck. He was paid by .club there, but you can’t fault him because even though he was probably paid 5 figures to say 50inthe.club he said 50inthe.com club, it’s a default trigger we all naturally have.

 

[MapleDots]

A lot of companies will start off using thier country code. As they grow and want to go global they will try and aquire the .com not the .io not the .ca not the .frog the .com

.global wont over take .com people don't recognize .global for sh*t. You know what they do recognize? .COM

STOP BEING A HATER. .CA WILL NEVER BE .COM

That is totally out of context to my opening post, I never once implied a ccTLD will become a .com.
I also did not imply that .global will be, I said .global or something similar.

So no hate here, just open discussion and nobody is attacking .com

 

[UmerK]

There is very little demand for geo .com's in Canada.
I can sell you some if you like.

I respect your opinion but the Canadian market seems to be working a lot better for me for now. When I run out of my lists and have no more to reg for $1, I will probably hit you up and buy some

 

[Kate]

While we are talking about .nl it has a high penetration rate with 5.8M registrations, which is not bad for a small country of 17M people.
https://www.sidn.nl/
If .us was as popular it would be nearly as big as .com today.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

if you believe .com has anything to do with Trump

I think the way the international business (non-domain) media reported the event is exactly zeroing in on that association. e.g. headline on MarketWatch: "Trump Admin Lets Verisign Boost .Com Domain Name Prices" (link) . That reminded people that while all TLDs are ICANN controlled, .com and .net are also regulated by the US government.

 

[atinc]

Show attachment 104853


A worldwide shift away from .com?

Could it be?

This question is very utopic/utopian.

No shifts happening..

You mentioned U.S politics may affect .com growth globally but than you are giving examples of companies who use ccTLDs..(BestBuy, HomeDepot etc.)

Ironic.

They are all U.S companies. If U.S politics can affect .com growth negatively because Verisign is an American company than what about the others you mentioned who use those ccTLD overseas?

To be clear I don't think U.S politics would affect .com growth in an ways..

Today there is only one fact; if you own a 1 word dot com domain and you own 1 word ccTLD domain or you own exact match new gTLD domain, your .com domain would cost more than the other ones.

No shifts gonna happen. But ccTLDs and new gTLDs providing new options for end users and if the .com version is taken than they can consider going with another extension which would only affect new registrations not the whole .com niche.

I think its always better to have a domain name that would not limit itself geographically. We are living in internet age and there is globalism. You can reach more people online with your product and services. But if you are only a local business than its fine.. .com and most new gTLDs do not have this problem, they can both target global audiences.

I was late into the game so I wasn't able to hand reg. 1 word .com domains but I was lucky enough to be early in new gTLD times and hand reg.ed some cool exact match domains.

 

[MapleDots]

This question is very utopic/utopian.

No shifts happening..

You mentioned U.S politics may affect .com growth globally but than you are giving examples of companies who use ccTLDs..(BestBuy, HomeDepot etc.)

Ironic.

They are all U.S companies. If U.S politics can affect .com growth negatively because Verisign is an American company than what about the others you mentioned who use those ccTLD overseas?

To be clear I don't think U.S politics would affect .com growth in an ways..

Today there is only one fact; if you own a 1 word dot com domain and you own 1 word ccTLD domain or you own exact match new gTLD domain, your .com domain would cost more than the other ones.

No shifts gonna happen. But ccTLDs and new gTLDs providing new options for end users and if the .com version is taken than they can consider going with another extension which would only affect new registrations not the whole .com niche.

I think its always better to have a domain name that would not limit itself geographically. We are living in internet age and there is globalism. You can reach more people online with your product and services. But if you are only a local business than its fine.. .com and most new gTLDs do not have this problem, they can both target global audiences.

I was late into the game so I wasn't able to hand reg. 1 word .com domains but I was lucky enough to be early in new gTLD times and hand reg.ed some cool exact match domains.

Each country has its own rules for commerce and to give an example.... if BestBuy went to China then BestBuy.cn would be the choice to go with because people can buy in local currencies. So arguing the point you are making does not make sense, BestBuy.com is one domain when they will probably eventually have BestBuy dot country code for every country they do business in. How can you even remotely argue that ccTLD's are not replacing the .com's? Each company has numerous ccTLD's to one .com!

Used to be companies would do business the old way like Apple does..... Apple.com/ca but even in that case Apple still owns the .ca and forwards it to the .com.

ccTLD's will, and already have, outgrown the .com's and anyone that does not see this is..... well.... you know..... wrong.

Remember I am not saying ccTLD's will be more valuable, I am saying they will be more plentiful and that is precisely why they will dramatically outgrow the .com's.

 

[xynames]

OP: Do you mean outgrow as in...more and more of these extensions will be created...? Or perhaps that more and more of these extensions will be hand registered? Is either of these your definition of growth?

I’d define growth as in use of the domains, not to mention sales volume both in numbers and of course - far and away - by dollars - in use, sales volume and sales dollars, dot com remains far and away #1. If your thread title were something like “Other extensions are being created [or registered] rapidly” that would be one thing but as it stands your thread title is misleading, flat out wrong and, frankly, click bait.