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They made a terrible, terrible decision with selling gTLDs

They made a terrible decision selling and TLDs! Having ".com, .org, .net" etc didn't add anything of value; it just added confusion.

This website should be
https://slashdot/

Google should be
https://google/

Microsoft should be
https://microsoft/

- simpler, easier, and less confusion with other sites. I'm not saying that "." shouldn't be allowed but it should be treated no different to any other character in the URL. The different TLD just made it easier for website squatters to have more places to squat.

http://microsoft/ does

It goes beyond that... it's also about recognition.

When I see "blablabla.com" I'm pretty sure that's a website. When toplevel domains are fully customizable and some companies will presumably start using http://microsoft/ or http://apple/ ... recognition will be gone, which is very annoying and slightly confusing. Most annoying for me personally (and many others I gather) will be I can no longer use the top bar for both searching and entering a webaddress. If I enter one word right now, it searches for it and if I enter a word+".com" (or similar) it goes to the web page. How will it be able to know once we go "keyword"-ing our TLDs? (Without either having a current list of ALL TLD's (which can become a huge list) or looking it up online (which introduces lag, especially on mobiles)?

But it was bound to happen I guess... ICANN wasn't going to ignore this huge amount of money that they can make from this just because it might make sense.

>>Is how many orders of "herbal viagra" do you need to sell to pull in $185,000 to register .v1agra (or other such clever alternate spelling) to run your spamming operation with no registrar oversight ever again?

That would be awesome. I'd setup my local BIND servers to think they are the TLD for .v1agra and point it all to 127.0.0.1. I would then block any e-mail coming form @*.v1agra.

But the majority of spammers wouldn't do this because of how easy it is to block.

What I can see is a security nightmare. In todays mind set, I will register .c0m Or .C0M with a zero. .0rg aka .0RG.

Now how hard is it going to be to spot the different between http://ebay.com/ and http://ebay.c0m/ for the average joe?

Mindset of a few years down the road. Now common are domains like http://checking.uowbank/ So as a hacker I register U0WBANK replacing the o with a zero. Will your font let you tell the difference in my phishing e-mail?

I'm not against the idea of more TLDs, but I can see how it will complicate security. Of course, if you allow any TLD then why not drop the entire TLD idea alltogether?

Let one register not EBAY.COM but EBAY. So it's HTTP://eBay You could basically do that with these opened up TLDs, but only those with $185k to burn will have something so nice. So we will end up with http://microsoft/ and http://apple/ but poor guys like me will still have .com at the end.

My $.0185

Yes, but really, do we even need TLDs at all anymore, if they're going to allow anyone with enough cash to register a TLD, why not just do away with them altogether.

http://slashdot/
http://google/
http://microsoft/
etc.

Realistically this would be better than having them register "http://*.google/", "http://*.microsoft/", etc. and would basically achieve the same purpose, TLDs were originally made to keep things organised, clearly they no longer want that.

Of course this would probably cause problems if you have "foo.com" and "foo.org" fighting over "foo"

This same thing happens at level of ISP - so bravo to Dell for taking advantage of it at computer level and using the leader in search relevance to give users something relevant. Anyone notice that the links offered on the Doogle page are EXACTLY what the user intended??

I recently moved and switched from VerizonDSL to Earthlink Cable (actually Road Runner with lower earthlink charges - which is actually Time Warner, etc.) and if I send a bum URL, I get an Earthlink-branded page that apparently is actually a 'myaccount' page. I have never installed anything from Earthlink on either of my computers and this happens automatically.

Talk about spyware, this redirector happens who knows where - Time Warner,RR,Earthlink, etc. - so clearly someone is spying on me:) although it only works on structural URL typos. if I put the examples used in articles (digg.xom and http://microsoft/ I get earthlink redirect and IE error page, respectively. This page source has to come from somewhere. Heck the /microsoft/ example is even better the Doogle way - at least it shows MS as top links...

And OpenDNS seems more like a cyber-squatter of typo-domains, who's tryin' to make a dime off it. ANd boohoo - have you seen opendns homepage? it is identical to Doogle page, except it is OpenDNS brand at top insted of Dell. They even use Google!!!

Why not get rid of TLD's to begin with?

Just http://slashdot/ or http://microsoft/
No mess, no fuzz.

If the .org or .co.uk part is essentially arbitrary (I have .org, .com and .net all pointing at the same site just so that someone else doesn't grab them), then wouldn't it make way more sense to just leave it out?

http://slashdot/
http://google/
http://apple/
http://microsoft/
etc..