.РФ - new Russian extension .RF

[BurnsInternet]

New IDN extension in Russia to be .РФ (.RF for Russian Federation)


English: RBC, 25.12.2007, Moscow 10:58:17.A Russian Cyrillic domain is expected to be launched in 2008. Market participants think that the domain will be popular among Internet users and is even likely to outpace the .ru domain, the RBC Daily newspaper reported today. Website names are to be written in Russian in the new domain, and its technological testing has been already completed. Domain registrars are now eligible to hold an auction for the most valuable names. Nearly 5,000 bids claiming over 460,000 domain names have already been received.

http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20071225105817.shtml

Russian: Кириллический домен ".рф" появится в Сети в 2008 году

http://top.rbc.ru/society/25/12/2007/131437.shtml

More stories:

Google/translate of first 3 links.
Announcement for Russian idn.idn

National Cyrillic domain. Russia will otkryt25.12.2007, Moscow 08:56:53 National Cyrillic domain. Russia will be opened in 2008, Market participants believe that the domain will be drawn among users, and can eventually overtake zone. Ru on the number of registrations. ...
mastertalk.ru/topic45824.html? view = getnewpost-4时间前-関連ページ

Cyrillic domain. "Russia" will appear in the Network in 2008:: The National Society ... Cyrillic domain. "Russia" will be opened on the Internet in the year 2008. That said Alexei Lesnikov Ru-Center director. Sites in this zone will be written in Russian. Now ...
top.rbc.ru/society/25/12/2007/131437.

RBC. Tape news. PDA- versiyaNatsionalny Cyrillic domain. Russia will be opened in 2008, Market participants believe that the domain will be drawn among users, and can eventually overtake zone. Ru on the number of registrations. According kiberskvotterov, the new zone is created ...
pda.rbc.ru/newsline/20071225085653.shtml-4时间前-関連ページ

Russian: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=ja&q="Национальный+кириллический+домен"&btnG=Google+検索&meta=

English: http://google.com/translate?u=http:...&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&langpair=ru|en&hl=en&ie=UTF8

Thanks to Rubber Duck, Bwhhisc, and Ajiotaj for providing links.

.

 

[ssamriga]

I wonder what the price will be...
Since I know Russian, I might try to grab some good keywords...

 

[SimpleDomaining]

that will be interesting. i just dont understand why do they need it, if there is already .ru extension that does great.

 

[Coopey]

that will be interesting. i just dont understand why do they need it, if there is already .ru extension that does great.

Imagine if Russia had 'invented' the internet, and everything was in Cyrillic. And to get to your favourite search engine you had to fire up Character Map or remember a load of ALT+*** keystrokes to get to:
ГООГЭЛ.СШ
Wouldn't you be a bit happier when you were finally able to type the first section in our lovely Roman letters:
google.СШ
And then finally, after a few years, someone has the idea of launching a Roman IDN extensions and you were finally able to simply type
google.us
That would be pretty nice I think, I'm sure most US web users would appreciate being able to use .us instead of .СШ
Just thinking 'what if it were the other way around' and you'll probably agree the .us would easily become more popular than .СШ

As long as .ru owners get an option on the corresponding .рф, I can imagine the new extension easily eclipsing (and perhaps eventually replacing) .ru

(By the way, I'm rubbish at Russian and can barely remember the alphabet, let alone any words so I'll put a disclaminer that the cyrillic characters used above are for illustration purposes only i.e. I think ГООГЭЛ = GOOGEL but am not 100% sure!)

 

[BurnsInternet]

Good explanation, Simon!

The .ru seems like a good, old-fashioned extension but the Russians are very proud of their history and language. They would rather use their own alphabet. Same thing is happening in China. Arabic countries and Japan are probably next.

Russians don't really use Google or Yahoo, they use Yandex.ru and Rambler.ru (which would be Яндекс.рф and Рамблер.рф ). Just like the Chinese use Baidu, not really Google or Yahoo.

Whatever 'we' think about it, it is their choice, and the Russians, Chinese, and many many other countries will start using their own languages in the 'address bar' of their browsers. This is just the way it will be.

I think that the general opinion of those of us who have registered Cyrillic domains is that Russians and Ukrainians have no problem typing in domains like Навигация.com or АвтоНовости.com. The traffic tells the story. They will, no doubt, move to .рф very quickly.

:imho:

.

 

[rodash]

As long as .ru owners get an option on the corresponding .рф, I can imagine the new extension easily eclipsing (and perhaps eventually replacing) .ru

Agree totally on this one. If people can interact exclusively in their own language, of course they will.

 

[BurnsInternet]

I wonder if that will happen. There are several ways to Romanize the Cyrillic words, so who would get Москва.рф? Moscow.ru? Moskva.ru? Mockba.ru?

 

[BurnsInternet]

Russia will not split the internet.

Regarding the technical side, he added: "There is no question about that impose particular root server. RF. The domain will be maintained at the existing root servers."

http://www.google.com/translate?u=http://telnews.ru/event/16133&langpair=ru|en&hl=en&ie=UTF8


Относительно технической стороны вопроса он добавил: «Нет никакой речи о том, чтобы ввести отдельные корневые сервера для .РФ. Домен будет поддерживаться на уже существующих корневых серверах.»

http://telnews.ru/event/16133

 

[IDNholder]

I wonder if that will happen. There are several ways to Romanize the Cyrillic words, so who would get Москва.рф? Moscow.ru? Moskva.ru? Mockba.ru?

That's exactly why it won't happen.

 

[BurnsInternet]

Agreed

 

[SimpleDomaining]

that ".ru" is so deep sitting in mind, that it will be really hard to change mentality. can take years. my question is, if they just want to make it Cyrillic, why do not do ".ру" extension, that is ".ru" on Cyrillic? that way traffic could stay same on domains like Moskva.ru and on Москва.ру . IMHO. Anyway, looking forward to grab couple

 

[thefabfive]

I believe ICANN has stated that .ру (Cyrillic) would not be allowed as it looks the same as .py (ASCII) - the country code for Paraguay.

IDN extensions that are "confusingly similar" to existing extensions are unlikely to be approved.

 

[BurnsInternet]

Yes, the article claims that they would use RF because 1) PY would subject Russians to Paraguayan phishing and 2) the country is the Russian Federation, not Russia.

 

[Gerrit]

How many extentions will they be allowed to get? This new extention will be existing, .RU will very likely remain active as well, there is still .COM.RU which is also an official ccTLD, and even .SU still exists. Would the new ccTLD mean the slow death of .RU, .COM.RU or .SU, or do you think all will just happily live next to each other and all continue to accept new registrations?

 

[vanex]

Russians are only good as spammers.
Let them have any TLD they want and remove them from the world of international internet users

 

[Gerrit]

That is utter crap. Russia's economy is also developping and more and more western companies do business with Russia. So it is important that Russian internet presence can grow. Regardless of the fact that a cyrillic extention would contribute to that fact or not.

And don't forget, as Till Lindemann speaks about Moscow: ist doch die schönste Stadt der Welt!

 

[Kate]

Russians are only good as spammers.
Let them have any TLD they want and remove them from the world of international internet users

Most spam still comes from the US...