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ICANN Approves Two More Top-Level Domains
Cpyder writes "ICANN has decided to go forward with the implementation of two new top level domains, namely .mobi (for mobile use, sponsored by Nokia and T-Mobile) and .jobs (for job sites).
The ICANN Board meetings regarding the approval are available. It is not yet known when these domains will be available for registration, as this decision merely starts the technical and business negotiations for terms under which these domains will be registered. Normally the domains should become active somewhere next year.
Several other new TLDs are still up for discussion. These include .asia, .mail, .tel and .xxx.
Last October, ICANN approved .travel and .post. More on these new TLDs at PCWorld and Google News."
I still dont think any companies are going to be giving up the .com website. It just has so much marketing built into it.
.biz or some other imitiation. I am aware that this is just a subjective opinion, but I doubt I am the only one who feels this way, and I still think .com will never be touched as far as the most popular suffix.
I still lose credability for a site if it is
The domain's not sponsored by native speakers of English. In German and Finnish, "Mobi" sounds way better than "Mob".
I can think of dice.jobs, guru.jobs, and hot.jobs and not a whole lot else. What does that do to effectively partition the .com uber-TLD?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There was time when TLD meant something. You knew a .com was a company, a .org was a non-profit, a .net was service provider etc. Now a .org or .net can be any old profit-driven site selling anything. All these new TLDs are just pointless. .mobi?
And they're not domains anymore. They're vanity plates. A domain used to mean a bunch of computers that were connected and administered as a group. Now, it's a website.
I'm afraid it's just going to get more confusing.
The problem is that Monster.com is both a commercial enterprise and a job site. So which do you pick? .COM TLD. .COM addresses for sites that should use the new TLDs. .COM addresses so that they can get customers where the .xxx TLD would be banned.
Monster.jobs of course!
The practical reason why you would want more TLDs is to help people find stuff and offload the
To make this work you would have to stop using the
Problem: Lawyers will prevent that.
Even the pr0n sites would want to keep their
The whole thing is pointless unless you remove the lawyers from the process.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The bulk of userspace never knew what .com, .net, and .org meant and still don't. All they ever knew was that the web site address wasn't complete unless it ended in one of those names, and usually just .com (kind of like they had to start with www. as well). The average user doesn't know what the new TLDs are and doesn't care, since nothing's leaving the big three.
The intended purpose of expanding the namespace by adding new TLDs is both not necessary with the death of squatting and speculating as well as testy trademark holders lining up to register their names in any possible new TLDs, thus creating a scarcity in "good" 2nd level domain names in any new general purpose TLDs anyway.
And its not like there are a bunch of organizations suddenly willing to abandon 2LD in "the big three" for a new TLD in something nobody knows or understands; at best they might register their existing 2LD in the new TLD if it was 100% spot-on accurate (eg, monster.jobs, for example).
Nor are there a bunch of organizations saying "Gee, we have TLD that kind of matches our organization, maybe it's time to get on the intranets."
The only reason I can see ICANN releasing new TLDs is to raise money by selling the "management rights" to a bunch of Verisign wannabees, who if they have any brains, will just sell out to Verisign's monopoly as soon as they can.
But this strategy will only work a few more times for ICANN, because soon Verisign won't be interested in buying complete control of TLDs by proxy once the market is diluted enough.
This attempt to "classify" website types more precisely using the TLD is a big mistake, because all classification schemes are fundamentally flawed. Whatever taxonomy you try to come up with, there will always be other ways to look at it, exceptions and other things that just don't "fit". For example, what if I have a website that has some jobs on it, and other classifieds, but isn't dedicated to jobs? Do I get the .com or the .jobs? Oh, I get it, I am supposed to just buy all the applicable domains (and, presumably, confuse my customers with a multitude of possible web addresses).
Having the top level domain suffix be so specific is just a horribly simplistic way of trying to classify websites. Also, why can't they realize that the website owners themselves don't really want it. It just multiplies the number of domains you have to register in order to prevent confusion and squatters.
If they want to fix something real, then how about the problem of all those domain names out there that have been registered simply to display a stupid "search page", with a message saying "this domain is for sale". I seem to remember in the early 1990's that if you didn't use a domain for a "valid purpose" then it simply got returned to the pool. It irritates me no end to think of a domain and check its availability, only to find some asshat registered it for no purpose but to sit on it and hope to squeeze some money out of someone who really wants to use it.
If we were to free up all THOSE domains then that would be a helluva lot more useful to the internet than new TLDs. And isn't ICAAN sposed to be looking after the interests of the internet, rather than simply representing business interests?
Well .mobi makes since so mobile devices can talk to each other without filling up valuable .com domains or forcing calling a static IP Address.
.laptop and .newton or .automobile when my car gets a computer in it? maybe .toaster and .stove for my kitchen?
.mobi name is rediculous and completely useless, and will just end up costing businesses more money who want to control their brand names and now have to register more domain names to do so.
actually no..
should we start making top level domains for every new device that comes out? that's not how the internet works... you have a user agent profile and user agent string that every device sends to your web server, and that is how that should be handled, not with a top level domain name.
should there be
the
ICANN can give .* extensions and one day people are going to abandon that idea and start using AOL keywords type of scheme.
Yeah, its called Google
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