Unlimited TLD's

[gray929]

Sorry if this is old news or been posted before, just saw it posted on Slate.com's homepage this morning. Anyways, essentially there will be an unlimited amount of TLD's later this year when this new plan by ICANN goes into effect as an attempt to prevent cybersquatting. For instance, if Namepros wanted to spend the money they could purchase .namepros and have the forum url be forum.namepros. Because the name is TM to NP, no one else would be able to pick up that extension, if I read this correctly.
Another example is new york city getting .nyc.

But as the article mentions, people have found other ways to combat cyberquatting. For instance, they use search engines and says ICANN's plan is a little too late. The story provides an example with GM. If you go into Google and search general motors, Google won't lead you to general-motors.com it will give you the actual site gm.com it knows you are looking for.

What do you think? Will this plan be effective? Do you support it? How big of an effect will it have on the way people surf the internet?


http://www.slate.com/id/2222408/
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jienXKDbIYHNPcywgq84IqyHtbPw

 

[Jaco]

It's been well discussed.
It makes me love .com even more... although some of the geo tld's might get interesting and I may buy a few.

 

[-REECE-]

I honestly believe 95% of people employed by ICANN are gold diggers who don't give a damn what happens to the Internet so long as they can line their pockets in the process.

Suppose I'm GM and I decide to use 180k+ whatever the bid goes to on acquiring the .cars TLD because I've done a horrible job selling cars lately and think I can make that money back with such a "great" (sarcastic) extension.

I let the general public register domains for free, people like this idea and thousands of people buy .cars domains and setup websites on them. For getting these free domains, I place an ad on every website saying "GM is #1" , etc. Now I get a clever idea that maybe I can hurt my competitors by registering domains like DontBuyFord.cars, OnlyIdiotsBuyDodge.cars, etc. Clearly GM has turned into a cybersquatter -- what are we going to do? URS on every domain? GM might then reg similar names with synonyms, numbers, etc -- the possibilities are endless. So do you take the extension away? What about all the people that built domains on that extension? Nobody is going to be willing to manage the extension for free, so you've basically just punished all these people by taking the extension away from GM, seeing as they'll no doubt have to pay for their domains.

So ICANN awards the .cars contract to Ford. Ford realizes that some of these .cars sites are getting a lot of targeted traffic from car enthusiasts. Ford decides to raise their renewal fee to $100,000/year and redirect all that targeted traffic to Ford.com.

I doubt Ford or GM would do something like this, however I do think more than a few people will be applying for some of these extensions for reasons that have nothing to do with helping anyone but themselves.

 

[plaggypig]

Hold on to your hat -REECE-, I kid you not there is a company proposing a .car extension.

I have no freaking idea what kind of content they think would be 'unsafe' for a passenger to view inside a vehicle..

What are you doing on your netbook darling...

you're not..

looking at LOLcats?!
OMFG WE'RE GOING TO CRASH!!!!!!!!!!

 

[namenut]

Great idea. The arguement will go something like this:

Marketing: Yea its a great idea. We'll need to
double our budget and we'll start branding right
away....

CFO: Double!!!!!? Are you &%$@*$!& crazy?

Marketing: Well ....no, that"s just to start.
We're just now realizing result from the past
15 years on that little "com" campaign. So ....
should we continue with that too?

CFO:


NN

 

[Jaco]

I doubt Ford or GM would do something like this, however I do think more than a few people will be applying for some of these extensions for reasons that have nothing to do with helping anyone but themselves.

Uh, that is kind of the nature of free market business? To benefit ones own interests?

I mean, when someone originally registered business.com, they didn't do so for the benefit of humanity. This is simply the same thing as 'domaining' only on a macro level.

I agree 100% that ICANN is in it for the $$$, though. There is no question about that. Furthermore, the price of vanity TLD's *will* come down... You can bet your butt on that. Just as .com domains once cost $50 a year with a 2 year minimum and you can get them now for $6.99, expect to see vanity TLD's come down drastically in price as things progress.

 

[zoogo]

I can think of a few extentions the internet would be better with...

 

[-REECE-]

And a lot the internet would be better off without :hehe:

I can think of a few extentions the internet would be better with...

 

[zoogo]

And a lot the internet would be better off without :hehe:

The problem only occurs when people buy TLDs for niches that, although perhaps large, have dynamics and circumstances under which they operate that do not favour the purpose of TLDs, making the investment frivolous.

Besides, for example, find.jobs, you.travel, go.travel, cheap.travel, and domain.name, those extensions are fairly worthless. Honestly, though, if I was a huge corporation in the niche, I would definitely sponsor a TLD like that, if only to have high power domain hacks to myself - its a writeoff.

I expect to see .porn soon. You gotta understand we're small fish - buying a domain from us for couple tens of thousands of dollars ia a huge deal to most domainers, but drops in the bucket for the corporation.

I can imagine, like a lot of the other things that the car companies are using the "bailout so now we need to spend more to get people to buy more" excuse for, .cars may be next.

 

[-REECE-]

Well said nudu.

I hope we don't sell a .bailout

 

[DnEbook]

gonna be some interesting lawsuits coming up over the next few years

 

[mathewka010]

I expect to see .porn soon. You gotta understand we're small fish - buying a domain from us for couple tens of thousands of dollars ia a huge deal to most domainers, but drops in the bucket for the corporation.

How much would it cost to regsiter outright .namepros if namepros were to purchase this? I heard $125,00 to $185,000? Is this the case.

Thanks Mat

 

[intheflow]

If you have some serious cash lying around, there's a potential for a great investment. Imagine selling renewals every year for a 'product' that essentially requires no maintenance. It's all about trust, and gaining a strong foothold in the marketplace. If your tld becomes popular and trusted, the sky is the limit. It will take a huge marketing budget, and years to develop the branding, but we will see some people get filthy stinking rich.

I keep telling my friends, we are in the 'goldrush' days of the internet. The people that get well established now will be set for life.

 

[mathewka010]

I keep telling my friends, we are in the 'goldrush' days of the internet. The people that get well established now will be set for life.

I could not agree more, check out this link gives you an idea of where we are at with regards to the Trends Timeline chart

http://www.futuretrendsgroup.com/documents/RispinTrendsTimeline.pdf

still along way to go yet!

Anyone want to partner up and invest in some top level domains and ride the Information wave!
Cheers Mat

 

[Kate]

If you have some serious cash lying around, there's a potential for a great investment. Imagine selling renewals every year for a 'product' that essentially requires no maintenance.

The real cost is in promotion. Outside domaining circles, very few people even know about extensions such as .aero .jobs or .pro.
Nearly all post-2000 extensions are failures. Now imagine increasing the supply of TLDs tenfold... more money will be lost than made :imho:

 

[-REECE-]

The real sad thing about all this is that ICANN is doing nobody any favors -- new domainers are going to lose a pile of money, corporations will have to spend thousands, possibly tens of thousands per year to protect themselves from cybersquatters, consumers will be confused about what extension their favorite websites use,...

 

[staffjam]

Short term i feel it may hurt dot Com - but not as much as the other extensions.
I'm trying to figure out what it will do to .Org & .Net - whatever it is i don't think it will be good.

 

[bmugford]

I am not that worried. Internet usage is barely at 20%. Most people have never heard of any of the odd extensions now. I don't think this is exactly going to catch fire.

Many people think you can just apply for your own extension. They do not realize the initial cost, as well as yearly cost.

I think any domains with credibility now will keep credibility.
C/N/O and ccTLD are the ones I think that will have staying power.

There are limited extensions with any real value, and in those extensions there are limited great keywords.

Brad