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ICANN Reveals New TLD Application List
Eighteen months after first announcing expansion of the TLD space, ICANN has published the list of new gTLDs that have been applied for. A cursory glance reveals that.app was pretty popular, with 13 applications. Now begins the seven month objection period (but you have to be a large organization to lodge any). angry tapir writes in with info on how duplicate applications will be resolved. From the article: "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has released statistics about the applications for new top-level domains — so-called 'dot word' domains along the lines of .web and .bank ... Two hundred and thirty of the domains proposed by applicants will become the subject of ICANN's dispute resolution process — which involves an attempt among applicants for the same domain to come to a joint arrangement, followed by an auction if that's unsuccessful. There were 751 conflicting applications for domains in total, which in many cases are likely to involve generic suffixes like .secure."
Who exactly benefits from this other than ICANN and the registrars? Because I'm fairly sure it isn't the public in general.
Three entities want .sucks, four want .soccer, six want .law, five want .group, but only two want .sex
One name keeps appearing as the primary contact (but with different emails)
Daniel Schindler
TLD Squatters are born perhaps?
It is also interesting that the like of Apple, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft all applied for their TLD's but HP didn't.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Considering that many users still put "www.apple.com" in the Google search box rather than the address bar, then choose Apple from the list of results.... I don't think it will be a problem. Besides, with people visiting sites with foreign TLDs, such as .ca, .au, .pl, .ru, .cn - I don't think they'll be too overwhelmed with choices other than .com, .net and .org.
Also how many client/server scripts will break when the new TLDs arrive?
Probably the unicode TLDs will be a larger challenge than .app
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Kids who are just a little younger than me have the consensus view that rebellion means anyone under the age of 20 when the fast and the furious came out should get kanji tattoos. This leads to hilarious blogs like the hanzismatter where gullible buffoons get random asian style tats that mean nothing at all, or have something truly embarrassing like it means small wiener when translated. Of course the concept is pretty moronic in general, makes me want to move to China and start inking gullible buffoons with english words like "goatse.cx" and telling the morons it means "strong" in english.
Anyway the point of this ramble is I can see some of the UTF-8 kanji TLDs being popular for vanity email addresses among the kanji tats crowd. After all, its kanji, it must be cool, right? Also I think it would be hilarious to go thru life in the US when people ask me for my email address I can tell them vlm at-sign "draw them a kanji". This might cut down on spam too. In fact I think it would be doubly awesome if I could intentionally get a kanji TLD that means "goatse", or maybe some random swear word.
(Another fun thing will be watching the love I'm about to receive in about 10 seconds from /.ers with kanji tats)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
They are all for Google. Look at the email addresses.
Someone get on that quick!
Does anyone actually care about these new TLDs? Sure, I get that a few registrars anticipate making some money form them by selling ancillary registrations to people defending their names and trademarks for $5 a piece. But, do we really care about it? Do we really want MyName.Whatever?
To me, like .xxx a .secure or .mobile or even .google is meaningless. They are just longer to type and easier to forget than .com .net.org. Look at the ones we already have like .biz and .info that no one cares about and no one, besides spammers, actually use.
APP 13 applications
HOME 11
INC 11
ART 10
SHOP 9
LLC 9
BOOK 9
BLOG 9
MUSIC 8
MOVIE 8
DESIGN 8
Some big TLD squatter activity from:
donuts.co - 307 TLDs
famousfourmedia.com - 60 TLDs
Google wants 93 TLDs (including some legit trademarks)
You gotta love the crassness that ICANN displays when it comes to objections. Not only are you limited to the grounds upon which you object, but "you must pay a filing fee in the amount set and published by the relevant dispute resolution service provider at the time you file your objection." So IOW, if you can't afford to object (to the tune of USD6200 or more), you're shit out of luck.
For all that's holy, support the alt-roots movement before the Internet is completely consumed by commercial interests.