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New TLDs - Is There Any Real Benefit?
pigdawg writes "What is the purpose? What is the real benefit of new top level domains like .travel, .biz and .xxx? I don't believe these new TLDs will free up more names in .com or .org. Do they really think that orbitz.com will exchange their domain name to become orbitz.travel? Is the mostfrequenttypo.com porn site going to go legit and register under some new .xxx name? Again and again I keep coming to the same conclusion: given that many people/companies register their name in every TLD, it's all about generating more revenue for the registrars. What are your opinions on this subject?"
...but heck, 'enforce' is a dirty word on the internet.
Nothing is gained by having many TLD (top level domains). The purpose of a TLD was to denote what registry to look in as a last resort when looking up a domain name that was otherwise not cached in any of the DNS servers querried.
.earth appended after the country codes, but I doubt I'll have to worry about that.
Way Back When, When The Net Was Small, TLDs were used to distribute the load among the registries. With the advance of technology, there really isn't any functional reason to do so now.
In the mean time, the registry has been used like an index. Rather than look something up first, a person (machines don't care about DNS, just IP addresses) will type in a likely domain name and hope for the best. It is only after failure that they will go to the indexes like Yahoo and Google and look there for the address just like they would look in the phone book.
With the political forces already having created the country TLDs, there is no point at all to having, as you put it, "90's style suffixes appended to internet names".
What is surprising is the number of otherwise smart people who cannot grasp this. Since the DNS system is already difficult for humans to use by itself (eg. coke.com or coke.net or coke.int or coke.org or coke.ny.ny.us) because they are trying to use it like an index rather than a registry, they then advocate adding yet more TLDs. Yet it is the very use of TLDs that has confused the difference between an index and a registry in their minds in the first place, as well as caused the shell-game problem of which TLD to look under first.
Nothing I'm saying in any way reflects on the usefulness of the hierarchical system that is DNS. It is VERY useful to be able to separate www.whatever.the.heck from mx.whatever.the.heck from www.go.to.heck, etc.etc.etc.heck
The issue is TLDs, and TLDs have outlived their usefulness. At some point in the future, there will be a
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I'm not sure what benefit there is in establishing new TLDs. Honestly, I think that the new TLDs, and most of dubious ccTLDs (.sc, .ws, .cx, .cc) are pointless because a domain name that doesn't end in .com, .net, or .org doesn't have much in the way of perceived credibility. ... but that's mostly because I think that any domain name like "foo.info" or "bar.fm" just sounds cheesy. I especially despise the ".biz" TLD because it's just so damned tacky. Imagine "generalmotors.biz" or "phillipmorris.biz". No way.
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
The .biz TLD has given me an excellent spam heuristic. That alone makes it worthwhile, surely?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
There is absolutely no reason for .biz, .info, etc. Those were stupid ideas which were probably just to get more money for the registrars. Who knows how ICANN makes these decisions...
.biz. What if you want to start a business, but the domain you want (in the .com TLD) is taken by either cybersquatters, or another legitimate business (who does not have a worldwide trademark on the name of the business itself). Since there is .biz, you can just use that tld instead of using an entirely different name.
.biz than buy the .com from squatters.
Sure there's a good reason for
Example: Somewhere on the west coast, a 3 man company called "Joes Pool Cleaning" has registered joespoolcleaning.com. A year later a company on the east coast starts up, named "Joes Pool Cleaning" and finds that joespoolcleaning.com is taken. So they register and use joespoolcleaning.biz and everyone lives happily ever after.
Granted this is a somewhat contrived scenario, and you could argue that it only applies when the two companies are both A. small enough and B. geographically disparate enough, to not care about each other's presence and the name collision. But I'm pretty sure that does happen. And then there is the issue of domain cybersquatters having the name you really want. It's probably cheaper to just register in
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The batter has already been mixed; yet ICANN is still trying to separate the mixture into its separate parts.
It's too late. They've missed the bus. Only suckers will fall for this (they'll still make their money though, so what do they care).
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C seems to think they suck.
.mobi domain is harmful for reasons stated in the link above. .xxx is useless because pr0n sites will keep on using other TLDs and CCs. .biz is a ghetto. Can someone explain how a website in .info is more informative than a website in .con? Err... I mean .com?
I tend to agree with them. New TLDs are just a licence to print money. They do not offer new options for domain name holders - everyone with a business or company or product or trademark will just have to go out and get the same permuatations they already own for the existing TLDs and CCs. The name space gets filled up again and people lose out once more. The
Maybe it is just that someone at ICANN is a _big_ fan of Pokemon.
The DNS hierarchy needs a complete overhaul, not more random, money making and/or harmful branches.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
Also the suffix .com has been so embedded in the public consciousness that even if somebody reads joespoolcleaning.biz they will mistype it as .com half the time anyway.
Not sure I buy that one. Yes, .com has been nearly ubiquitous for a long time... but .biz domains are becoming more common, and I've started seeing them on advertising material, etc. I expect that the acceptance of .biz will increase over time.
Easier to come up with joesextremepoolcleaning.com or something else different.
You may be right. Especially in the pool cleaning scenario. There is still the issue of cybersquatters though. In which case nobody who owns the .com version is going to be in a position to sue you for using your chosen name, but just in a separate TLD. I've actually ran into this situation myself, and chose to register my domain as a .biz for this exact reason. If the business is successful, maybe later I'll deal with trying to get the .com version.
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