The future of .COM after new gTLDs boom! Big DROP?!

[New.Life]

According to the data and this simple chart:

http://www.registrarstats.com/TLDDomainCounts.aspx

Is there a BIG drop? Coming soon?

 

[.NJ]

But wait....

The Chinese New Year is going to explode the chip market again!

Oh....it's already over?

But wait....

The gtld's will explode next year!

Oh....It's already been three years?

Rinse....Repeat....Rinse....Repeat....Yada,Yada,Yada

 

[dumindu89]

And what about the last 3 years ? They do not count ?
It's always, wait, wait, patience, later, later. As if something magic was going to happen all of a sudden.

How do you compare 3 year old babies with 30 years old strong person? Is it fair? LOL
Were there 12 million+ sales in the first 3 years for .COM?
If you compare like that nTLDs are winners.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

I didnt have a computer when .coms first came out.
Compare the number of people online in 1995 to today.
You beating a dead.horse

 

[dordomai]

How do you compare 3 year old babies with 30 years old strong person? Is it fair? LOL
Were there 12 million+ sales in the first 3 years for .COM?
If you compare like that nTLDs are winners.

the usual arguments that don't make any sense.

1. TLDs are not people and don't have growth and lifespans like people. It's useless to make such comparisons. Unlike in people age doesn't mean that there will be growth. Many extensions never took off.

2. In the first years of .com no one was using the internet and no one was using it commercially. You can not make such comparisons for that reason.

3. registration numbers are not a good metric and don't tell us much. .tk has 20 million regs but virtually no mainstream brand usage or any sales.

 

[dumindu89]

the usual arguments that don't make any sense.

1. TLDs are not people and don't have growth and lifespans like people. It's useless to make such comparisons. Unlike in people age doesn't mean that there will be growth. Many extensions never took off.

2. In the first years of .com no one was using the internet and no one was using it commercially. You can not make such comparisons for that reason.

3. registration numbers are not a good metric and don't tell us much. .tk has 20 million regs but virtually no mainstream brand usage or any sales.

Life span does matter. .COM was the first commercially available TLD. You may not had a computer in 1985. But 1995? Were there any nTLD? Nope. So there is a huge lead in advance for .COM

So it's takes time to dissolve that .COM popularity and it has begun.

.tk is a free domain. I don't talk about free domains here.

 

[Kate]

How do you compare 3 year old babies with 30 years old strong person? Is it fair? LOL

I would distinguish between:

• corpTLDs (private strings)
• and the 'open' extensions that anybody or at least qualified applicants can register

If we just consider the corpTLDs, we can see that companies are reluctant to use them fully. They just have to start using and advertising them and that's it. It's not 'unfair' to expect that they use what they paid for. They don't need 30 years, not even 3 years. A 3-year old baby should be capable of walking by him/herself.
No, they are dragging their feet because it's not a priority.

Probably many of the applicants are not truly convinced about the merits of the gTLD program. They were conned into thinking that new extensions were the future and they should do defensive registrations just in case. Now they are having second thoughts. Even large conglomerates like Mitsubishi or Wal-Mart have dropped one delegated TLD each.

 

[dumindu89]

Note that your 3 years thing is valid only for 1 CorpReg to the date according to my knowledge

 

[168]

Life span does matter. .COM was the first commercially available TLD. You may not had a computer in 1985. But 1995? Were there any nTLD? Nope. So there is a huge lead in advance for .COM

So it's takes time to dissolve that .COM popularity and it has begun.

.tk is a free domain. I don't talk about free domains here.

Dude,
People who like to quote "history" leave out .com was free, .com was then 100 $ a year, then 35 $ a year and it wasn't until 10 years
later when the price dropped again that registrations began to rise because it was cheap enough for "investors". You will never hear
any of them mention the high profile sales ave hold time was 10+ years to realize the high values. Nor will they acknowledge the significant losses showing up in re-sales or re sellers bigger than themselves dumbing down values and ROI's. Nor will they mention that very few .cons are actually kings. Skip over New "G" sales that are preferred suggesting anomaly or will never go live.Most would rather sell a crappy .CON than suggest something relevant and proclaim the world is ignorant , successful people are wasteful and shoulda, coulda settled for a cheaper whatever vs. what they wanted, billion dollar Corps don't have a clue and proclaim the Chinese are dumb. These are the domain industry "Experts". I sure hope few end users know how to find this forum. It's no wonder "main stream" views this industry as sleaze given the way the "Experts" describe the customers.
Sweeping facts under the rug like they say. Since the "experts" have declared the time has passed you should pass on them too.
Happy Hunting

 

[dordomai]

The alternative naming concept would probably have worked well 20 years ago, but today, the new-gtld extensions are a terrible idea. At this point, there is no need for them and they serve no purpose other than providing additional inventory for registrars to promote and to fill the coffers of ICANN, the internet's naming authority.

Apparently, the Founding Chairwoman of ICANN is not a fan. Here is Esther Dyson saying that gtlds are "offensive" to trademark holders and that she sees no value to them. "I don't feel that (gtlds) add to the sum of human happiness", she added. "I'd rather see a whole bunch of intelligent people and a lot of money do something fundamentally more useful"

Jon Leibowitz, the then-FTC Chairman, is quoted as calling the gtlds a "potential disaster"

I think that ICANN foolishly opened a Pandora's Box that should never have been touched and that a lot of money will needlessly be lost in the process. At this point, the only way to get this ill-conceived genie back in its bottle will be to wait for it to die a painful death and then sweep up its cremated ashes. Shouldn't take too long, but, in the meantime, stick with .COM -- you'll be glad you did.

https://www.namepros.com/threads/domain-train-wreck-why-only-com-will-succeed.1000601/

 

[dumindu89]

Everyone can criticize that "oh.. nTLDs is a disaster", but still companies started applying for their own nTLDs regardless of those comments.

 

[Kate]

Of course, corporations will always waste money or take wrong bets. It's part of business.

The point has been made so many times: look, these companies have bought their names in .mobi, .tel .jobs, etc, it's proof they are believers. Reality: they are making defensive registrations as always. The proliferation of new extensions is a nuisance for them and a nightmare in terms of brand protection.

Before the new extensions, we have had industry-specific TLDs like .travel .aero .jobs .museum etc => all very successful as we know:
boeing.aero: unused
airbus.aero: not resolving

Pointless TLDs that nobody cares about.

Now they have moved up the ante, the only thing is that:

• they are reluctant to use their own TLDs (ask yourself why, it shouldn't take years to get things done)
  
• they are reluctant to decommission their .com and ccTLDs (ask yourself why)

Let's be honest, some companies are using their corpTLDs but for most businesses it doesn't change much really. The vast majority of businesses are not interested in their own TLD.
Just because Barclays is using .barclays doesn't mean I will want to use .xyz or .top or .whatever for my next business venture, simply because I can't have my own TLD. No. No.

It has limited impact over the existing dynamics around .com and ccTLDs.

The new gTLD program was set up for the benefit of Icann, the registries and the registrars, in order to create artificial demand for domain names and increase revenue streams. This is what it's all about, and that domain investors should keep in mind.

 

[Kate]

Oh and by the way one more nail in the coffin since we are talking about Barclays.

Ask yourself why they migrated their whole site to home.barclays, but left out the most critical part, the online banking that is still on .co.uk. Any guess ?
It's because home.barclays is just the global portal. That's why barclays.com redirects to home.barclays.

If you are a British resident, you go to http://www.barclays.co.uk for your banking. The URL for Barclays France is https://www.barclays.fr/ etc.

If private TLDs are so great then why aren't other British banks doing the same ? Or maybe they should use .bank instead ? Oh wait, they will just stick to their .com and ccTLDs, that they have owned for two decades. Again, what was the problem we are trying to solve.

 

[dumindu89]

Oh and by the way one more nail in the coffin since we are talking about Barclays.

Ask yourself why they migrated their whole site to home.barclays, but left out the most critical part, the online banking that is still on .co.uk. Any guess ?
It's because home.barclays is just the global portal. That's why barclays.com redirects to home.barclays.

If you are a British resident, you go to http://www.barclays.co.uk for your banking. The URL for Barclays France is https://www.barclays.fr/ etc.

If private TLDs are so great then why aren't other British banks doing the same ? Or maybe they should use .bank instead ? Oh wait, they will just stick to their .com and ccTLDs, that they have owned for two decades. Again, what was the problem we are trying to solve.

Your point doesn't justify that they don't believe in nTLDs. Otherwise they could have not spend on buying that TLD or just buy the nTLD and do not develop the web site on it. By the way they ignored the .COM and it redirects to the nTLD. So they don't care the .COM specially which is the best part. So for barclays .COM is not a king anymore.

It's not just Barclays..

BNPParibas
Kred
Cern
Google
Canon
Merck
Neustar
Everbank
Saxo Bank
JCB
Pictet Group

slowly moving to their CorpTLDs

and its counting

 

[Kate]

Great, I hope this is going to boost the value of your gTLD portfolio.
If you just say that big corporations have applied their own extensions, for sure everybody will want to buy your domain names

Do you run a business by the way ? On which extension ?
Maybe you are employed, or still a student and the question doesn't apply to you, I don't know.
But I don't think a lot of gTLD investors have tried their own medicine for real.

 

[dumindu89]

Posting in this thread doesn't help me to boost my domain names values and I have very few domain names and most of them are developed web sites.

The point I made was not sell my domains, show the increasing popularity of nTLDs among the corps.

 

[dordomai]

Your point doesn't justify that they don't believe in nTLDs. Otherwise they could have not spend on buying that TLD or just buy the nTLD and do not develop the web site on it. By the way they ignored the .COM and it redirects to the nTLD. So they don't care the .COM specially which is the best part. So for barclays .COM is not a king anymore.

It's not just Barclays..

BNPParibas
Kred
Cern
Google
Canon
Merck
Neustar
Everbank
Saxo Bank
JCB
Pictet Group

slowly moving to their CorpTLDs

and its counting

is the glass half-empty or half-full?

In that case I would say it is 99% emtpy because out of hundreds of corps that got their TLD only a handful used them for their main presence.

After 3 years this list shows that it is a fail because almost no one has enough confidence to use them for marketing.

Did you know that new TLDs have issues with emails not getting through?

Would you use an unreliable email system for your marketing? Would you use an URL that many don't recognize and that is confusing?

It appears that the majority doesn't want to.

Much more fail than not IMO

also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_&_Co. Website Merck.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(company) Website http://jcb.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverBank Website Everbank.com

 

[dordomai]

If private TLDs are so great then why aren't other British banks doing the same ? Or maybe they should use .bank instead ? Oh wait, they will just stick to their .com and ccTLDs, that they have owned for two decades. Again, what was the problem we are trying to solve.

not sure exactly... maybe they don't want to solve, they want to cause problems. Canon went from canon.com (9 chars) to home.canon (10 chars) but still left the support site under .com and the local sites under the ccTLD.

Now they have a longer and more confusing URL. It wouldn't surprise me if many of these eventually switch back.

Others have been doing the same and are using the ccTLDs. My guess is that the new TLDs will be much less popular for local sites. Virtually impossible for them to take off locally I would say.

 

[dumindu89]

is the glass half-empty or half-full?

In that case I would say it is 99% emtpy because out of hundreds of corps that got their TLD only a handful used them for their main presence.

After 3 years this list shows that it is a fail because almost no one has enough confidence to use them for marketing.

Did you know that new TLDs have issues with emails not getting through?

Would you use an unreliable email system for your marketing? Would you use an URL that many don't recognize and that is confusing?

It appears that the majority doesn't want to.

Much more fail than not IMO

also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_&_Co. Website Merck.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(company) Website http://jcb.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverBank Website Everbank.com

LOL. You are the man who knows everything.

First do a clear research before you talk something.

The first two Wiki links you mentioned are NOT the companies I talked about.

Merck is the Merck Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Group
Main site: http://www.merckgroup.com/en/index.html
CorpTLD used site: http://www.magazine.emerck/en/index.html

JCB is the JCB credit card company not the heavy equipment company.
company site: http://www.global.jcb/en/

Now I can think of the people's general knowledge who are talking that ".COM is the king and nTLDs is a disaster". They never ever do a clear research before start what they talking.


Everbank used their TLD for the careers site
URL: https://about.everbank/careers

 

[dordomai]

Everbank and Merck are not using them for their main presence or marketing so these 2 are meaningless. 2 fails.

Of course TLDs are a disaster. What % of corps are actually using them for their main presence in the real world. Why don't you show the proportions instead of a few isolated examples.

 

[dumindu89]

Everbank and Merck are not using them for their main presence or marketing so these 2 are meaningless. 2 fails.

Of course TLDs are a disaster. What % of corps are actually using them for their main presence in the real world. Why don't you show the proportions instead of a few isolated examples.

First of all, tell me why did you put like this?
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_&_Co. Website Merck.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(company) Website http://jcb.com"

 

[dordomai]

First of all, tell me why did you put like this?
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_&_Co. Website Merck.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCB_(company) Website http://jcb.com"

I will tell you if you tell me why you think a low single digit or less percentage of real world usage for their main sites after 3 years shows a meaningful adaption by end-users?

Everbank used their TLD for the careers site
URL: https://about.everbank/careers

if you think that is positive ask yourself why they are not using it for their consumer websites?

 

[dumindu89]

I will tell you if you tell me why you think a low single digit or less percentage of real world usage for their main sites after 3 years shows a meaningful adaption by end-users?



if you think that is positive ask yourself why they are not using it for their consumer websites?

It's a big process for large corps. Apple will move to .apple soon. You will get surprised I guess.

 

[dordomai]

It's a big process for large corps. Apple will move to .apple soon. You will get surprised I guess.

do you have any press release or any hint from them that they will do that? Such a large corp wouldn't need years to move their site?

If you don't it's just a daydream...

try searching site:.apple with google and you see it's dead. Try the same for other tech giants like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle. It's pretty much dead.

 

[dumindu89]

do you have any press release or any hint from them that they will do that? Such a large corp wouldn't need years to move their site?

If you don't it's just a daydream...

OMG. That means you will definitely get surprised when they moved to .apple extension.

 

[dordomai]

OMG. That means you will definitely get surprised when they moved to .apple extension.

what if they don't move?