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.us Domains Coming in 2002
marnanel writes "Perhaps it had to happen eventually: the .us top-level domain has been transferred to a private company, NeuStar. One of the most interesting effects of this is that second-level domains, such as foo.us, will be available for the first time, instead of the existing hierarchical county.state.us system." But not until mid 2002.
This comes at a very bad time. The .us extention should have been available since the beginning. Extentionless domains (.com; .org; .net) should be classified as "worldwide sites", example: www.amazon.com should lead to Amazon's worldwide site, or a portal page that leads to Amazon's localized sites (amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, etc..). Instead, amazon.com leads to amazon's USA homepage. This is clearly wrong and a problem. The .com extention should be intended for non-localized sites, not the american site (are we too good for our own extention)?
.com.us, instead of .com, leading to a 404 or the inevitable: the site of some domain stockpiler out to cheat a few innocent individuals out of their money.
.com domain, because they are strictly a US company (just like most foreign companies do). The webmaster makes the politically-correct decision to purchase a .com.us domain.
.com domain. But, the webmaster shouldn't have to: oxygenrx isn't a worldwide corporation.
.us domains. It mixes in politics, the stupidity of the average Joe AOL-user. Another solution could be simply removing locale specific extentions... AHHHHHH!
This also leads to another problem. Smaller sites don't want to have to manage two extentions (for the sake of costs and fragmentation). A few poltically-correct people will start typing in
Here's a scenaraio:
Small US based business with a website, does no international business. Clearly, Company X shouldn't have to buy a
Once the site has been up and popularized, a potential customer hears about the site; oxygenrx. He types oxygenrx.com into his browser... 404:not found. The potential customer releases a string of obcenities, then proceeds to a competitor's site. The opposite of this is true as well.
The obvious solution to this problem would be to buy a
Another way to put this into perspective is with the naming of a company.
For example, there is a company: Brooklyn Cheese House inc. From the name, you can tell it is strictly a small local business. One day, the managment changes it's name to Cheese House International. But, it's not an international business: it's still a small retail store in Brooklyn. Surely this will confuse customers (probably those who choose to patronize a local business over a large one). Same concept with the domains: a proper name prevents confusion and improves business.
Of course, this can't all be credited to the lateness in the availability of
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Umm.
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