What will happen after 15 years?

[0lgi]

Hello !

I would like to know what will happen after 15 years if all the .com / .net /.org domains will not be available ?

In my opinion the best thing would be to have an unregistration of all domains and in 2020 new registrations for all the domains ! That will be a great war :D

 

[cy4nide]

this guy makes a good point, but where to get started from?
any suggestion ? :P

 

[mubina]

Didnt happen with phone numbers and I dont see it happening with domains either, just keeping adding extensions.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Some beilieve that as all of the LLL, LLLL domains get taken up, that LLLLL letter domains will gain loads of value and so on. It's not going ot happen. LLL domains are only worth loads because they are officially the least number of letters officially allowed on .com/net/org/info/biz and .us domains ( the main domain extensions ) and they make great acronyms.

It will not happen. People will continually drop domains and new extensions will be created. Also, the really long ones will also STILL be useless.

Even so, it won't all happen in 9 years!!

 

[Rockefella]

Some beilieve that as all of the LLL, LLLL domains get taken up, that LLLLL letter domains will gain loads of value and so on. It's not going ot happen. LLL domains are only worth loads because they are officially the least number of letters officially allowed on .com/net/org/info/biz and .us domains ( the main domain extensions ) and they make great acronyms.

It will not happen. People will continually drop domains and new extensions will be created. Also, the really long ones will also STILL be useless.

Even so, it won't all happen in 9 years!!

People didn't think that 1-800-xxx-xxxx numbers would ever run out anytime soon, but they did. Now it's even hard to find good 1-888-xxx-xxxx numbers.

 

[Ronald Regging]

People didn't think that 1-800-xxx-xxxx numbers would ever run out anytime soon, but they did. Now it's even hard to find good 1-888-xxx-xxxx numbers.

Yeah but 800 and 888 numbers are standard forms used for communication... domains are used for communication, but the only standard is the minimum and maximum lengths... Therefore you have a wide range of quality... I can't ever imagine seeing a business card for a company where their website is www.xyfovq.com and has absolutely nothing to do with their name or product, just because all 5 letter domains and most 6 letter domains were already registered... There will always be new extensions and a good name in a lesser extension is more valuable than a mash of random letters in a good extension. Obviously 3 and 4 letter extensions have potential for being useful acronyms like the previous poster stated, but above that, scarcity in length isn't going to drive up value.

 

[deleted984054565403]

Domains use letters and numbers; telephone numbers use, well, numbers.
Domains can be (almost) any length; telephone numbers are limited to the area code plus seven digits.
Domains have many extensions, a number that is growing every month; it is impossible for telephone numbers to have such a concept.

There are 47,952 3-character domain names per extension.
There are 1,774,224 4-character domains per extension.
There are 65,646,288 5-character domains per extension.
There are 2,428,912,656 6-character domains per extension.

Note the "per extension". These figures include domains with hyphens as inside characters (not the first or last characters), as well as domains with numbers. I'm not sure if they're exact, but it still gets the point across.

And if all domains are "unregistered" at a certain point, where would you register them? And what happens to the thousands of online businesses that rake in millions, or even billions of dollars per year?

 

[commandercody]

Seriously though, how many extentions can you remember? How many words and letters before its too far gone. Or the search engines start taking other extensions seriously. I think what happens instead is people just get all or most of what they need from the web from a internal super site. Google, Yahoo and MSN are really pushing hard toward that goal.

 

[Lasher]

Which leads to the interesting theory that in some ways it is in our interests to keep prices for LLLL acronyms within the range that a relatively small business can afford, or we could end up killing our own market.

 

[domainacrobat]

Domians will still be here for sure in 15 years. The way we travel the net will change, but the address will stay the same! Net navigation will be the main thing that changes. In 15 years I think ext will become less relevant. Right now its vital to a companies success. At the end of every other commercial you hear: visit ________.com. 2009 will see the merging of Tv and Internet permanently. Once that happens extentions relevance will change. Surfing the web and tv will be one and the same, most likely in 3D. Once the stucture changes a new business model will evolve and I doubt .Com will be TLD of choice. To accomadate the new structure they will undoubtedly unveil a new TLD that is required.

 

[Rockefella]

Domians will still be here for sure in 15 years. The way we travel the net will change, but the address will stay the same! Net navigation will be the main thing that changes. In 15 years I think ext will become less relevant. Right now its vital to a companies success. At the end of every other commercial you hear: visit ________.com. 2009 will see the merging of Tv and Internet permanently. Once that happens extentions relevance will change. Surfing the web and tv will be one and the same, most likely in 3D. Once the stucture changes a new business model will evolve and I doubt .Com will be TLD of choice. To accomadate the new structure they will undoubtedly unveil a new TLD that is required.

I would never underestimate the power of legacy. The internet started with dot com and for the masses, dot com is where it will be at for a very very long time.

Someone said earlier that, with domains, you can just add extensions and the same is not true for 800 numbers. I beg to differ. I think 888, 877, 866, etc. are all analogous to extensions. The phone companies are basically creating new extensions because the 800 numbers have run out. 888 is pretty nice, but people still pay premiums to have 800 numbers, and 800 numbers continue to be hotly traded. Is there something intrinsically magical about 800 as opposed to 888? No. It's just that 800 is what people are used to. Just like dot com.

Even if you add new extensions to domains, that won't dilute the power of dot coms. As the number of good dot com domains dwindles, the value of dot com will just continue to rise. Owning a good dot com domain will in my opinion increasingly resemble owning a good address on Park Ave in Manhattan.

That's why I've been acquiring dot coms here and there. I plan to buy and hold for the long term. If I'm wrong about dot coms continuing to rise in price, I'll pay the price in my own lost dollars.

 

[Ronald Regging]

That's why I've been acquiring dot coms here and there. I plan to buy and hold for the long term. If I'm wrong about dot coms continuing to rise in price, I'll pay the price in my own lost dollars.

I dont think the issue you were responding to originally had anything to do with stating that .coms wont hold their value, it was talking about the unlikeliness of LLLLL, LLLLLL, etc gaining value as the shorter domains all become taken. There is no doubt in my mind that .coms will hold their value, regardless of new extensions that are created.

As for the 800 and 888 example, at this point they both are in common use and I dont think it makes a difference to any consumer if its 800 or 888. The reason they are heavily traded, is because people want quality numbers which can translate into words pertaining to the products they are selling or are easy to remember numbers. I doubt anyone would pay top dollar for a random 800 number, when they could probably buy a more relevant 888 number. Which was my point exactly, people wont pay top dollar for a random 5 or 6 letter .com, just because of scarcity, unless it pertains to their business or product in some way. They can just as easily purchase a more relevant domain in a lesser extension.

 

[VURG]

I view domain names as internet property. I think the market is only just beginning to realise the value of seeing domain names as an asset. I think that a lot of the big players of the future are not involved yet. Traditionally people have held onto useless property for generations and ended up quite wealthy doing so. I expect the same to happen for domains.

I wouldn't be suprised if the LLLLL.com domains have run out by then. I know that there is over 13 million and that a large percentage of them are quite useless to most people but I still wouldn't be suprised.

.COM will stay king unless they get too expensive and lots wealthy people get very frustrated with Verisign and start huge campaigns on another extension.

 

[Rockefella]

I view domain names as internet property. I think the market is only just beginning to realise the value of seeing domain names as an asset. I think that a lot of the big players of the future are not involved yet. Traditionally people have held onto useless property for generations and ended up quite wealthy doing so. I expect the same to happen for domains.

Preach on brother.

To the other poster, actually I beg to differ. Quite a lot of companies prefer 800 numbers to "more relevant" 888, 877, 866, etc. numbers. Maybe to more educated folk, there isn't a huge difference between 888 and 800, but to the masses, 888 is confusing. They don't immediately get that it's a toll-free number. I think the same translates to .com. There will always be some people who prefer a less relevant dot com to a more relevant dot net or dot info.

I see lots of companies go with, for example, www.HGTV.com instead of the more relevant www.HG.tv. Home & Garden TV clearly made a decision that they'd rather have an LLLL.com than a LL.tv. AND they're a cable tv station.

Market behavior isn't always rational, but then again, people aren't always rational either. Just take a look at the housing or stock markets for confirmation of this.

 

[wow!]

I see the domain market as the stock market.
Loads of speculated sales and making value higher and lower by the big fishes...
For example endusers do not use 3char .net usualy but what we see is that suddenly the 3char domains going higher. Only by resellers.
The future is not sure for us domainers.
Maybe in 15 years people just will use audio internet.
They'll say "wow" and they'll get the wow site.
As a domainer I dont like it but if we look at the system of typing a name and getting a site it is still looking oldfashion for me.
Time will tell.
Till than lets buy and sell like crazy...

 

[gattoplano]

It's not sure. Internet may change radically.
Maybe we'll have new extensions (ex. .moon .saturn .mars :D) but even some new system based on NO EXTENSION.

www.xyz.com = you must remember 3 things. I think that www and com could be easily taken out. We could have no extension and totally new operating systems working on new image-based concepts. I also think that domains could lose a lot of value towards good contents, with technologies going forward.

Talking about present, I see a lot of potential in .tv as well, by the way...

Aldo

 

[faisj]

I see the domain market as the stock market.
Loads of speculated sales and making value higher and lower by the big fishes...
For example endusers do not use 3char .net usualy but what we see is that suddenly the 3char domains going higher. Only by resellers.
The future is not sure for us domainers.
Maybe in 15 years people just will use audio internet.
They'll say "wow" and they'll get the wow site.
As a domainer I dont like it but if we look at the system of typing a name and getting a site it is still looking oldfashion for me.
Time will tell.
Till than lets buy and sell like crazy...

I agree.
I would like to add that tech will be so much more advance then
that I am sure that there will be a solutions for this problem.

I do hope that there will not be any auto URL correct systems in the
webbrowsers so typo's have no value.

 

[ekal]

Remember why telephone numbers were 7 digits originally? Thats because human memory tops out at remembering that many digits easily. Be honest, now that phone numbers are 10-digits (U.S.), 11-digits (U.K.) or more - how many can you remember?

Words are slightly different of course, but the limit for acronyms must be 6 or 7. Apart from that its made-up words or long phrases that will be used.