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Mobile Top Level Domain Gets ICANN Nod

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the jungle-gets-thicker-every-day dept.

Sushant Bhatia writes "Despite fierce criticism from Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, ICANN has decided to go ahead and create a new TLD (Top Level Domain) aimed at mobile phones and other mobile devices. Bizarrely the new domain will be '.mobi'. Considering that one of the chief banes of accessing the Internet from a mobile phone is the fact that keying in long Internet addresses takes time, the decision to use .mobi seem odd. A good place to keep up with the ongoings of ICANN is the ICANN Watch which reports that a TLD system has been launched in Turkey as the result of an alliance between the Turkish Informatics Association (TBD) and Unified Identity Technology (UNIDT)."

3 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Strange departure by coflow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is this TLD based on the medium used to access it? In the past the TLD had more to do with the nature of the organization hosting the website.....

  2. .m would be even better by aberson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    unless there's a reason that you can't have a 1 character tld

    [not to mention that "mo" are on the same key in a cellphone, making it even more annoying to key in... but at least predictive text might pick up that you're typing "mobile"]

  3. Why is TBL mad? by LionKimbro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He says it will devalue existing domain names.

    Okay, so: What's wrong with that?

    These are mnemonics, not currencies.

    Their intent was never to be a currency. Just mnemonics.

    If you are buying up names because you think they'll be valuable later on, you're doing something dumb. The names system doesn't owe you anything. You aren't owed a profit on names.

    Let the names be plentiful.