advice What might be the future of domain names ?

[Pat8]

Hey NP,

Domain names have emerged as a great asset class since the dawn of the internet. But will this trend continue or will this industry get disrupted by decentralized technologies?

In this post, I have tried to answer it:

What might be the future of Domain Names?

Domain names have been in existence since the dawn of Internet (world wide web). In fact, domain names are the most crucial aspect of this internet revolution. They are the addresses of all the amazing applications that were built on it. Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, WeChat, PayPal and lot more are all basically websites/applications that can be accessed through Internet protocols. So the question is, will this industry keep growing or is it about to be disrupted? This is not about newGTLDS vs.COMs, this is about domains or NO domains!

 

[dordomai]

Hi All,

I'm new here, please excuse my IT centric views, but its what I know. I spent 10 years in the Fortune 50 IT world: Microsoft, Boeing and Sprint. I know next to nothing about how to make money with domains, it's why I am here.

Domains are Universal Resource Locaters. It's not about websites in the long run. Look at IPv6 and how everything will have an IP address. If you want to have an idea where URL's are going to be used and how, it might make sense to read RFC's. The first thing to become "decentralized" will be search. What you search for will be stored peer to peer and disiminated by repositories such as Google. Imagine going into a library and doing a search for a book. How would you feel if that search returned "paid" ads? Right now we have a "Yellow Pages" without a "White Pages" private search world. It's for a reason, and that reason is acceptance and expansion. The same holds true for mobile communications. Right now we have "walled gardens", but as connectivity becomes ubiquitous, the Sprints and Verizons will be defined by content and usaged more than connectivity. How will we find all that content? URL's. Will URL's be domains in the future? Likely it will be a mixture of AI and search. How will humans interface with AI? Not an IPv6 address but by URL's that are categorized, and likely that will be the domain name system for some time to come. If you understand Ray Kuzweil's predictions; once "singularity" happens, domains will be less and less important. I have an Apple TV device, the remote does not have numbers, it has a microphone. You don't tell it to go to channel 10030405, you tell it what you want and it returns results based on AI and search. Until singularity happens URL's will be how will find everything.

Thx! Mopho

an URL can not be without a domain.

domains were made for humans, IPs for machines.

Voice search is not different from keyboard search. Both result in text output. Just a different input method.

 

[Mopho]

an URL can not be without a domain.

domains were made for humans, IPs for machines.

Voice search is not different from keyboard search. Both result in text output. Just a different input method.

So are trying to make my point or are you saying I am mistaken? My point was that I think the domain name system will be around for some time to come and I used AI and voice search as as an example. I also said that domains are not just about websites. They are most commonly used as email addresses, but also for FTP and to connect to databases, I feel that there will be more uses for domains because so many things will be assigned an IP address in the future. My point on voice search is that it will (partly) rely on domains, as you clearly pointed out in your comment. Search using either voice or keyboard can output text, but it can also output graphics. If you haven't already, checkout the wiki for "URL". It goes over the history URL's and it's adoption and use. Will another protocol or technology supplant domains? Sure.

 

[Name Trader]

an URL can not be without a domain.

domains were made for humans, IPs for machines.

Voice search is not different from keyboard search. Both result in text output. Just a different input method.

how are all these made-up brandable domains going to work in any voice activated search?