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ICANN Selects New Top Level Domains
Azog, joined by a bevy of like-mindeds, wrote with the news: "ICANN has selected several proposals for new TLDs for further negotiation. The selected entries, and their proposed TLDs, are:
JVTeam (.biz), Afilias (.info), Global Name Registry (.name), RegistryPro (.pro), MDMA (.museum), SITA (.aero), and NCBA (.coop)." Here is the
unanimously accepted resolution.
cyrdog points to Wired's coverage, and pavelivanov points to the story at CNET. And as several people have pointed out, .web is conspicously absent, even though it seems like a shoo-in. Someone, somewhere is going to get that one day ... Update: 11/17 09:48 PM by H :Check out SatireWire's coverage as well *grin*.
Is it just me or does this seem like a weak start for new TLDs? My guess is that these new TLDs will become the ghetto of domain names. Real businesses will have .com domains, and wannabes will have .biz. But new TLDs are always good, because they remove an artificial scarcity that damages small websites.
ICANN's new TLD choices are more lame than I'd expected. I figured on some heavy-hitting TLDs like .WEB and .NOM or even .TEL. Instead ICANN chose what amounts to token TLDs...because for all intensive purposes the new TLDs will have limited appeal and usefulness...for example:
.COM and in the eye of some people .biz has negative connotations and will instill images of con artists and second rate businesses in their minds; many people will feel that real business uses .COM
.NOM would have been a much better choice...why did ICANN pick .name over .nom??
.museum - why so many limited use TLDs...doesn't make sense to me.
.name in the sense that .pro is also aimed towards individuals - many people who register their name in .name will also do so in .pro.
.COM's dominance is not threatened in any way from these new TLDs...in fact the contrary will be true....COM will be more valuable and sought than ever before. Thanks again ICANN for keeping .COM #1!!
museum: How many people will actually use that TLD?
Heck, many people can't even spell museum!
biz: redundant to
.info: Actually not a bad TLD...but certainly not a top TLD choice in my view since its appeal will be limited.
.name: Terrible!!
.aero: About as limited as
.pro: Seems redundant to
.coop: The most ridiculous TLD of the bunch...some ICANN folks flew the coop when they chose to approve this one...coop is a totally useless TLD.
Bottom line is that
Apparently, it's not just a matter of their saying "gee, a .foo would be cool," but it's a matter of giving the new .foo over to the person/organization who submitted the proposal.
They dropped .xxx and .kids because the applicants weren't competent to run a registry service.
So, it didn't come down to logical divisions, but to registrars. Just like .mil is managed by one organization (DoD), so would .xxx or .kids.
Personally, I am glad ".kids" didn't make it. It's an idiomatic word. (Is it related to that infamous .cx image?). I also prefer the three-letter ones, just in consistency.
I also didn't like the .web thing. Isn't the www. convention enough? Or would Foobar Inc., need to move their web presence to some new toplevel domain?
[
I was actually looking forward to the new domains. I thought they would create some good ones that might be worth using. I find these new ones to be most illogical, however. Except for .biz and .pro, they are all over three letters! Judging from how unsuccessful .us has been due to its long extensions (see nic.us to see how long they are; domainname.city.state.us), you would think that they'd learn. What about .web? And how about .porn or .xxx, which would finally make it easy to create filters that didn't have large rates of misblocking pages while not blocking all pages that they are supposed to (see peacefire.org)? I could have done a better job than them and I'm just a teenager.
.com, .net, and .org. There is no way that creating extensions that only apply to a small percentage of people will work. We need to get rid of this appointed web authority.
The whole point of this was to get rid of the congestion that has overtaken
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
What a *great* way to keep the money flowing in, eh? It must be getting pretty darn difficult to register any reasonable sort of domain names (ie. single or paired words that make sense) these days.
:*)
Well, the whole market is opened up again. The domain squatters will throw a pile of money at the registrars, who will kick money back to ICANN.
And then the trademark disputes will begin, enriching the lawyers.
And most of the rest of us will be left out of the loop, 'cause we were to slow to jump in at the start.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The real reason we don't have infinite TLD's though is that we'd just be moving the problem up a level. Instead of fighting over "foo.com", Foo Inc. and Joe's Foo Emporium will fighto over ownership of the "dot foo" namespace. And now, they'll have to compete with the Foo Foundation (formerly foo.org) and Foo University (formerly foo.edu).
No, the real solution here is twofold. We need
--
The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
I just hope I can be the first person to try to get the chicken.coop domain name. WOOHOO!
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
If the introduction of new TLDs works this time, maybe your favourite TLD will be introduced next time, and maybe from then on, TLDs will be introduced more often.
Also, someone asked why there has to be limits on TLDs, and not an infinite number. This is because you have to have the root-servers on the internet where a name lookup can start if you are looking up a name, and the way DNS works is to cache lookups around the net, since it is hierarchical, thus alleviating the root-servers' workload. The stability of the root-servers are actually essential to the stability of the internet as it is used today.
Let me moderate them one by one:
.biz
Score 1, Redundant
A dot-com wannabe? What does this entail, other than having the people that already own dot-com trying to sue for the dot-biz? .info
Score -1, Redundant
Hmm, i wonder what this one if for? Any use i can think of for this one can be better served by info.domain.something... .name
Score -1, Silly
This is probably the worse option for "personal" domains i can think of. Let alone sorting problems with two people having the same name (who gets the domain? the oldest?), i don't really think this is going to be very popular. I wouldn't want one, would you? IMHO they should have gone for .home, .ind (for individual, or independent, or whatever you want it to mean) or something of the kind. .pro
Score 4, Interesting
This looks like it can actually be used to some effect. Of course, if it's targeted at professionals of some sort, i wonder if it is going to achieve its objectives. I see a lot of www.windows.pro domains popping up for magazines, companies, and so on. But that's probably what they want anyway, to sell domain names, right? Being useful to people is for sissies... .museum
Score -1, Troll
dot-what? Is anyone here in their right minds? How many of those are there going to be? 100? 200? 5000? What's next? dot-church? Too limited, too long, too hard to remember if there are only going to be a few of them. .aero
Score -1, Redundant
Too limited. Too self-serving. Too redundant. Except if it's meant as a domain for airheads... .coop
Score 2, Interesting
This one could be interesting, but isn't this covered by .com or .org already? It could prove limited in usage.
In general, the new domains are either redundant or too limited in usage. The criteria for appraisal of the proposals were not, in my oppinion, in the best interest of the Internet Community. ICANN could have started off a whole lot better.I always knew I was going to miss Jon Postel, i just didn't know I was going to miss him this much.
free the mallocs!
If you read the application, the second level will be
So it is really more like a Usenet-style name system. Ex: ford.auto.pro, citibank.fin.pro, northwest.aero.pro, etc.