news The End Of .COM

[DomainVP]

With the new Google acquisition of ABC.XYZ Lori Anne Wardi recently wrote an interesting article on "The Dawn of the Post Dot Com Era".

https://www.neustar.biz/blog/the-dawn-of-the-post-dot-com-era

It's notable to point out that Lori also was a representative of the .CO extension, when Twitter was using no_url_shorteners and Amazon bought A.co, Z.co, and K.co in 2011.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/17/amazon-buys-the-a-co-z-co-k-co-and-cloud-co-domains/

“We’re not looking for a major brand to switch over to .co, but every day new companies are starting and can’t get the domain name that they want,” says Wardi. “We want to be the domain of the next Twitter and the next Facebook.”

Big companies that bought new extensions; do you think the end result will be the same for .XYZ?

 

[nomen]

The fact that people have to come on a thread and shout ".com is still king" means that this king's dominance is weakening.

Just take a look at our world today!! Convention is being upturned and thats why for me, despite respecting .com, i have already accepted that there are profitable, in demand extensions other than .com. i mean how insecure can some .com lovers be? If .com really is the king then why does anyone have to come out and ask or confirm that its still king? like my saying goes- "insecurities are just like popcorn- they always have to jump out". so the more of you that come out to say what we all always assumed- that .com is king, youre only proving that .com is weakening. And yes, price is very important and .com is losing the price game(because its becoming a rich man's game and we all know the rich are so few in the world compared to average people). Few people have $xxxx to spend on a domain talk less of $xxxxx and even FEWER have six digits to spend on a domain so maybe thats why .com is weakening. Remember when everyone assumed the US economy will dominate forever? Well now we ALL KNOW its going to change very soon. Remember when we never thought the US would have a black president? well it already happened. So the world is going through some big changes now and i feel confident the domain market for alternative extensions will be very healthy in the near future.

Mostly agree with you. .COM is weakening. Or not exactly weakening, but a lot of names that I would have bought in .COM let's say two years ago, I wouldn't buy any more. In my mind, it's for certain that nGTLDs will break within time. Not any single one of them, but the concept as a whole. But it's gonna take time.

Why I believe this way? Because if I were a business owner in, say, real-estate space, .property, .apartment, .villas etc. would seem tempting to me. They would feel as my "own".

To be clear, .COM isn't going anywhere but nGTLDs will be adopted, too.

 

[nomen]

I have bad news for them: If you failed at dotcom, new extensions will not be your savior.

With this, I wholeheartedly agree.

 

[sOliver]

with the entirety of the grown-up internet on .com and not a single meaningful marketing budget poised towards marketing anything else (try to persuade a Michigan Avenue advertising war room to use a non .com and see how far you get),.

There are millions going to into the promotion of new domain extension and products with costs of 100m+ are being promoted on new gTLDs. Some billion dollar companies are already on gTLDs. Do your research.

Too many here on NP are stuck in the past, believing gTLD will not affect their business. It has and it will. NET and ORG are already seeing less sales. At least the names you and me are trying to sell (I am not talking about gems like malls.com, teamwork.com, business.com, etc.) have lost in value. Names that used to be in the 20 to 30k range will be very difficult to move in 2017 and beyond and everyone who still owns such names then will notice changes in the way they can negotiate with other parties.

This has a great impact and we're already seeing corporations complain about gTLDs so much that they want to sue ICANN - so don't tell me the impact is low. On a scale of 0 to 10 I would rate it a BIG 8. It's huge and a huge opportunity for this industry.

 

[nomen]

There are millions going to into the promotion of new domain extension and products with costs of 100m+ are being promoted on new gTLDs. Some billion dollar companies are already on gTLDs. Do your research.

Too many here on NP are stuck in the past, believing gTLD will not affect their business. It has and it will. NET and ORG are already seeing less sales. At least the names you and me are trying to sell (I am not talking about gems like malls.com, teamwork.com, business.com, etc.) have lost in value. Names that used to be in the 20 to 30k range will be very difficult to move in 2017 and beyond and everyone who still owns such names then will notice changes in the way they can negotiate with other parties.

This has a great impact and we're already seeing corporations complain about gTLDs so much that they want to sue ICANN - so don't tell me the impact is low. On a scale of 0 to 10 I would rate it a BIG 8. It's huge and a huge opportunity for this industry.

Exactly. New extensions are not a threat but a HUGE opportunity.

 

[Kate]

Exactly. New extensions are not a threat but a HUGE opportunity.

For the registries and the registrars.... Not for domainers. Few will make any significant money. I think the risk/reward ratio is truly disproportionate. Have you ever heard of domainers making a killing in alternate extensions in in the past ?

Some new extensions will do better than others but on the whole they are even less desirable than .biz today. Consumers have so much choice in new extensions that they don't need to buy any from domainers, with a few exceptions. New extensions are not fit for pure play domaining. Low demand, huge supply.

 

[disaac81]

Just because you flood the market it does not mean it weakens the top of the crop, if anything it makes it stronger.

Anyway, apparently the universe is a hologram, so none of this really matters :P

 

[nomen]

For the registries and the registrars.... Not for domainers. Few will make any significant money. I think the risk/reward ratio is truly disproportionate. Have you ever heard of domainers making a killing in alternate extensions in in the past ?

Some new extensions will do better than others but on the whole they are even less desirable than .biz today. Consumers have so much choice in new extensions that they don't need to buy any from domainers, with a few exceptions. New extensions are not fit for pure play domaining. Low demand, huge supply.

Sure, kinda agree that registry operators are the big winners but I think that there's money to be made with good new gtlds for domainers too. And it's not exactly fair to compare 1 year old extensions to many, many year old extensions. No-one thought that they would catch fire from day one... At leat I didn't.

 

[Fonzie]

Yep

www.HologramUniverse. org

Same guy behind www.1Search. org

Same guy that gave the world the 30Mod Prime Alrorithm

www.PrimeAlgorithm. com

Same guy I've known for over 40 years a pure genius

hehe

Oh, look. Its Sollog aka DomainLords doing that thing where he pretends he's someone else, referring to himself as a 'genius'.

Your routine is played out. You only impress the total new guys, John.

 

[rubencouto]

Hello!

I've read somwhere that a possible next step is going to be the possibility to choose the extension just as you choose the name. If this happens, users will be able to determine both what is before and after the dot. For example, I would be able to register ruben.couto and so on.
I think, in time and if this happens, along with other internet changes, .com might grow weaker in the way that its relative value may decrease (how much it will decrease may depend on how search engines - or equivalent - will handle the new paradigm of domain names). The way we see and use the internet may change completely. However, I think .com will always be considered a reference and will not end.

 

[Fonzie]

There are millions going to into the promotion of new domain extension and products with costs of 100m+ are being promoted on new gTLDs. Some billion dollar companies are already on gTLDs. Do your research.

Too many here on NP are stuck in the past, believing gTLD will not affect their business. It has and it will. NET and ORG are already seeing less sales. At least the names you and me are trying to sell (I am not talking about gems like malls.com, teamwork.com, business.com, etc.) have lost in value. Names that used to be in the 20 to 30k range will be very difficult to move in 2017 and beyond and everyone who still owns such names then will notice changes in the way they can negotiate with other parties.

This has a great impact and we're already seeing corporations complain about gTLDs so much that they want to sue ICANN - so don't tell me the impact is low. On a scale of 0 to 10 I would rate it a BIG 8. It's huge and a huge opportunity for this industry.

Lots of vapid speculation and gross exaggeration there.
There may be 'millions going into promoting new TLD's', however if we added up all the entirety of all commercial dollars spent that involved advertising a .com domain name since the advent and rise of commercial internet, it's probably trillions (with a T and a S).

Companies that want to sue ICANN about new gTLDs has absoltuely nothing to do with the marketing importance of the new TLDs, everything to do with some of the TLDs being nothing more than an IP shakedown racket where brand owners feel compelled to register their www.brand.whatever (which was much more financially manageable in the old era but is much more difficult in the era of rapidly expanding private-interest TLD spaces that are predictibly involving the same morons we see registering www.AMicrosoftSite.info doing the same in whatever .trash they have a 'hunch' about, which gets costly to run down across a sea of new TLDs)

Its not a huge opportunity for anyone but the operators, and the most interesting part will be when some of them start going bust but their operations are worth less than the costs to ICANN and manage them. What then with the few bozos who registered domains in those ridiculous extensions? Does ICANN then take over 'orphan' TLDs? Expect to see that coming in years to come.

I do believe this is probably a long term paradigm shift, but outside the scope of my own lifetime (and yours too). Common to all naive believers of irrational 'radical change' is this unfounded notion that anyone who points out they're off-base is just 'stuck in the past'. It has nothing to do with being 'stuck in the past' as much as it does some people have enough insight to forecast the future better than you.

I've had this conversation time and time again in the domain space with .co, .tel, "3d Domainers", etc. None of them listen, "this time it's different", "you're just stuck in the past", etc, etc, etc, until they finally get pounded out by renewals (usually year 2 or 3) and they just quietly vanish from the domain space all together.

 

[jmcc]

Something that hasn't been mentioned. .com is less popular outside the US because other countires have country code domains which are sometimes preferred to .com

Most of the major markets outside the US are now ccTLD dominant in that their own ccTLD dominates the market and .COM and the other gTLDs occupy lower percentages of that country's domain footprint. The .COM only has a very small global segment. Most of it is made up of legacy and country level registrations. Many of the legacy .COM domains in non-US markets are typically pointed to the .ccTLD website of the registrant.

The US until very recently didn't have a country code domain so it was .com for them.

It has had one for quite some time but it has been really poorly marketed.

I am in the UK. On one of my websites I use the .co.uk name. I have the .com name but prefer to use the .co.uk name to show the site is in the UK and is aimed at the UK. So for me, the .com has little value in this case.

Can't beat a ccTLD for a ccTLD market. I've been watching the Irish market and the UK markets relatively closely and the UK went ccTLD positive a long time ago. The Irish market is now ccTLD positive and .COM registrations are stalling at replacement level. Website utilisation also tends to be higher in the ccTLDs where there is an established country level market. This is a classic mature domain name market thing. In an early market, the early adopters are trying to sell globally. As the market matures, they are outnumbered by those trying to sell locally.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

Mostly agree with you. .COM is weakening. Or not exactly weakening, but a lot of names that I would have bought in .COM let's say two years ago, I wouldn't buy any more. In my mind, it's for certain that nGTLDs will break within time. Not any single one of them, but the concept as a whole. But it's gonna take time.

The .COM isn't exactly weakening. It is changing and maturing. It is still the defacto global TLD but as country level markets mature, they go ccTLD dominant/positive and most of the registration volume switches from .COM in those markets to .ccTLD. Many of the new gTLDS are actually pseudo-ccTLDs in that they represent a niche. The ones where the registrants begin to consider these new gTLDs as "their" extension, as opposed to generic new gTLDs, are the ones to watch.

Regards...jmcc

 

[nomen]

The .COM isn't exactly weakening. It is changing and maturing. It is still the defacto global TLD but as country level markets mature, they go ccTLD dominant/positive and most of the registration volume switches from .COM in those markets to .ccTLD. Many of the new gTLDS are actually pseudo-ccTLDs in that they represent a niche. The ones where the registrants begin to consider these new gTLDs as "their" extension, as opposed to generic new gTLDs, are the ones to watch.

Regards...jmcc

Fair enough, changing and maturing then. But ccTLDs have always been preferred over .COM in their respective countries. At least in Europe. I'm not a big believer in generic new G's either and me too believe that for the new gTLD program to really succeed, niche extensions are the key (and kind of the whole point of the concept).

 

[jmcc]

Fair enough, changing and maturing then. But ccTLDs have always been preferred over .COM in their respective countries. At least in Europe. I'm not a big believer in generic new G's either and me too believe that for the new gTLD program to really succeed, niche extensions are the key (and kind of the whole point of the concept).

Actually most countries in Europe started out .COM positive as the ccTLDs were run out of university computer science departments by academics. It was only when .COM started to take off during the mid to late 1990s that many of the ccTLD registries emerged from the universities. It took a while for most of these ccTLDs to gain registration volume because the clueless academic thinking had all sorts of stupid rules like no generics and one domain per registrant. The open ccTLDs in Europe tend to have the most registrations. The .COM share of European country domain markets has been falling over the last ten years. Generic new gTLDs are going to be competing with .COM and if they don't have a unique selling proposition for the registrants (not the big multinationals), then people won't register and develop in these new gTLDs. The two factors for success in a new TLD are development and usage. Without them, the TLD turns into a zombie TLD where there are registrations but little or no development. This is what happened to .EU ccTLD due to the incompetence of the EU commission. It was to have replaced .COM for EU companies and registrants but the incompetent legislative framework, stupidly designed IP rights validation system and bungled launch (the registry fell over a few minutes into General Availability/Landrush) destroyed the ccTLD. It still has not recovered and usage and development in the ccTLD is minimal. It takes a lot of money to get a TLD started and being actively developed. Many of the new gTLDs may have difficulty covering their operating costs in the first year. It is the old story - many will try, a few will be a modest success and a handful will be a great success.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Kate]

I've read somwhere that a possible next step is going to be the possibility to choose the extension just as you choose the name. If this happens, users will be able to determine both what is before and after the dot. For example, I would be able to register ruben.couto and so on.

But the current DNS doesn't work like this. That would mean everybody can freely add 'dynamic' extensions to the root zone. But this has always been a tightly controlled process. It is unlikely that government(s) will allow that.
Just think of the controversy surrounding .xxx or other adult/LGBT extensions. The GAC nearly killed .xxx.
The other aspect is confusion and scalability. Icann will normally reject strings that are 'confusingly similar' to existing extensions, even though we have .picture and pictures etc.

I think, in time and if this happens, along with other internet changes, .com might grow weaker in the way that its relative value may decrease (how much it will decrease may depend on how search engines - or equivalent - will handle the new paradigm of domain names). The way we see and use the internet may change completely.

I have emphasized some keywords in your sentence to illustrate a point

Some newbies/fanbois like to say that the new extensions critics are 'stuck in the past'. They think that because the Internet changes very fast, everything is obsolete soon, but that is not quite true.
The underlying protocols of the Internet that we use as of today were designed in the 80s, in the 70s for some. They are still based on the old RFCs. The DNS was designed in 1983 by Mockapetris and deployment started around 1984-1985. 30-year old technology. But the phone number system is way older and AFAIK it's not broken.
Domain names are Internet infrastructure. In fact, the new extensions work exactly like the old ones. There is no technology shift involved at all.

The thing to remember is that the doomsayers usually have a vested interest and are trying to sell your something. Hype and scare go hand in hand.

 

[.tv]

I am sure that people will be comparing .whatevergtldjunkisalive with .com in 2050 too.

 

[carob]

For the registries and the registrars.... Not for domainers. Few will make any significant money. I think the risk/reward ratio is truly disproportionate. Have you ever heard of domainers making a killing in alternate extensions in in the past ?

A few bubble surfers made money on .mobi, and probably .co. So they need to puff up the bubble and get out at the top of the wave before it crashes.

Look at all the extensions Godaddy used to push - .name, .ws, .mobi... where are they now? Yes .mobi did go bust, despite huge promotion and even early adoption by big names.

 

[rubencouto]

But the current DNS doesn't work like this. That would mean everybody can freely add 'dynamic' extensions to the root zone. But this has always been a tightly controlled process. It is unlikely that government(s) will allow that.
Just think of the controversy surrounding .xxx or other adult/LGBT extensions. The GAC nearly killed .xxx.
The other aspect is confusion and scalability. Icann will normally reject strings that are 'confusingly similar' to existing extensions, even though we have .picture and pictures etc.

I have emphasized some keywords in your sentence to illustrate a point

Some newbies/fanbois like to say that the new extensions critics are 'stuck in the past'. They think that because the Internet changes very fast, everything is obsolete soon, but that is not quite true.
The underlying protocols of the Internet that we use as of today were designed in the 80s, in the 70s for some. They are still based on the old RFCs. The DNS was designed in 1983 by Mockapetris and deployment started around 1984-1985. 30-year old technology. But the phone number system is way older and AFAIK it's not broken.
Domain names are Internet infrastructure. In fact, the new extensions work exactly like the old ones. There is no technology shift involved at all.

The thing to remember is that the doomsayers usually have a vested interest and are trying to sell your something. Hype and scare go hand in hand.

Hello!

Very interesting points!

This one is quite good: "doomsayers usually have a vested interest and are trying to sell you something."!

 

[marsi]

.XYZ is on Sale for $1.99 at Dynadot.com

As for the Comparison, Dare to Compare!!

 

[Paturan]

haha yeah sure guys :D

 

[baseballworld]

.COM is not going anywhere. People get a bug about a new deal and omg the sky is falling. If anything I have noticed a rise in my traffic. lol

 

[Suraj Soni]

.xyz has only one plus point that Google is using it otherwise it is same like other extensions.

Internet is not all about google and even Google prefer to get .com but they could not get it so settle with .xyz

I will better stay from .xyz

 

[nomen]

A few bubble surfers made money on .mobi, and probably .co. So they need to puff up the bubble and get out at the top of the wave before it crashes.

Look at all the extensions Godaddy used to push - .name, .ws, .mobi... where are they now? Yes .mobi did go bust, despite huge promotion and even early adoption by big names.

Yeah but except for .CO, all of those were garbage extensions right from the get-go. All the good repurposed extensions have survived, i.e. .CO, .ME, .TV, and now, .IO. Which would suggest that good, make-sense new gTLDs will survive, too.

 

[vicky4712]

Dot com due to its huge popularity and worldwide use would stay the top extension .But other international tlds like club,biz,net,xyz,org,info,two word premiums with dot in middle (i.e. online.shop) will be popular as a secondary choice to com and find a good value in the domain market.

 

[RU]

I love new tlds, but I still buy .coms on Godaddy expired auctions.