Dotless Domain Names Prohibited, ICANN Tells Google

New submitter gwstuff writes "Last year, Google filed applications for about 100 top level domains. These included .app, .cloud and .lol, but perhaps most prominently .search, which they had requested to operate as a 'dotless' domain. [Friday], ICANN gave their verdict on the idea that would make this URL valid : NO. Here is the formal announcement, and a related Slashdot story from last year. So that's that. But it may still be granted the rights for the remaining 100. Is prime dot-com real estate going to become a thing of the past?"

Comments

.com is still king

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't matter what other TLDs are announced. .com is still king for consumers, anything else is a just a toy for the nerdy.

Re:.com is still king

[alphatel]

doesn't matter what other TLDs are announced. .com is still king for consumers, anything else is a just a toy for the nerdy.

Your statement is correct but a bit too understated. I would add the following

It is very hard to get people to switch. Even the new internet generation that has no particular preference for .com or .other are hard won when trying to get them to change their defaults. If you tell someone to go to a website they either search, or type in the name and add .com (and an immense number of searchers type the .com part of the domain into the search box too).

Everyone knows you could have another extension but it's not their first choice. .ME and .CO were probably two of the biggest recent TLD launches. You can still pick up a premium in either of these extensions for micro-pennies on the .com dollar, registrations are still less than .1 % of total .com, and the US by far outregisters more domains in all extensions than all other countries combined.

Lastly, consider that ICANN is definitely the most inept entity in existence. As long as they keep the US Govt happy, they will always continue to run the rest of their org as a stupendous dung heap. This whole game of rolling out new TLDs will take them at least 5 years, and that's not counting all the supreme screwups that are sure to make the process less and less tasteful for those inside and outside the market.

Given these factors, I would say that .com will be king, for 20 years at least. Yes you can launch "help.apple" or "game.app" and get some traction, but anything less than the uber-premium word is going to have much less draw for an exceptionally long time. If nothing else but due to the way US consumers are trained en masse. You need to start a whole new brainwashing program to rewire people and I don't see anyone coughing up a few billion for that ad campaign anytime soon.

Re:.com is still king

[petermgreen]

For example, how many American companies apply for .us domain? The other side of the coin is that you are only talking about the English speaking world.

Heck he is probablly only talking about the USA

Over here in the uk .co.uk is pretty commonly used. Sometimes .com will take you to the right place too but other tines it will take you to a foreign company of the same name or for multinational companies to the american website of the company in question.

Re:.com is still king

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

I can't remember the last time I entered a URL manually. What is this, 1994?

Err, how about the first time you visit your bank's Online Banking subsite?

You know the way they tell you in the introductory letter to enter the URL manually and as written in the letter? There is a reason for that.

Just a shame they don't print the signature of their SSL cert in the letter, too.

Re:.com is still king

[alphatel]

...Given these factors, I would say that .com will be king, for 20 years at least.

Trying to make predictions on human behavior on the internet is pointless and for fools. 20 years ago the masses all thought AOL keywords was the only way to search. We've come a LONG way since then, along with a few game-changers along the way (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, smartphones) that change how people act and interact completely with the internet.

All it would take is another game changer to nullify your statement completely to modify behavior like this. We already don't type FQDNs in favor of being lazy and typing a single word into the search bar that is (now) built into every browser instead of having to actually go to your favorite engine search page and type it in. Yet another example of how behavior has modified itself rather quickly. How long before voice commands take over completely? You really think it's going to be 20 years before I'm just speaking a single word into a smartphone to find something? Oh wait, I forgot, we also do that today.

You make bright, salient points, which in contrary to your statements, indirectly validate the concept of .com strength.

When AOL was launched, it was "going to create a whole new internet". They had their own browser, interface, portals, etc.

Smartphones were going to replace all of that silly typing, Siri was the next generation's voice.

Facebook and Twitter did away with the need for any other way of communication, your profile was the place to be and eradicated the internet as a whole.

Every one of these were internet-killers. World changing, revolutionary, mind-numbing behavior modifiers. In the end they are all nothing next to the concept of free internet browsing, with your own browser, your own limitless mind and your exceptionally mindless searching which brings up whatever result has the most cash behind it. And since big companies (all of the examples above used .COM to make their stand), tend to stake the same horse, you will have it this way for a long time.

I am going to make one possible exception however. Govt spying on all fronts has the world incredibly nervous and with good reason. This could be the game changer behavior that drives people to use extensions that simply aren't traceable to a DNS query in the traditional way, or are simply part of a peer network like .bit or .onion or even something far more interesting if it ever gets created.

Re: .com is still king

[runningduck]

My bank is always sending me emails with attached statements and incredible offers. I just click on the links I. The emails.

Re:.com is still king

[Optali]

I did exactly this.
  I am very happy with my new customer support from Lagos Nigeria they are very friendly, specially Dr. Mobutu Sese Jr. (son of the latter President Mobotu Sese Seko)
There seems to be a little problem with my salary but they promised me to transfer 10.000.000USD as soon as the funds get unfrozen at their secret Swiss bank account.

Re: no.maybe.yes?

[alphatel]

I'd like to have "dot". Can you imagine the confusion when people try to communicate what the URL is?

Or could you imagine some madman calling his site "slash" "dot", it would be twice as confusing.

Whats the point

[rossdee]

Most of the new devices connecting to the internet these days don't have a keyboard, who's gonna type in a URL anyway.

How about just using the dot?

[LoneTech]

Dotless names are used for local hosts (and frequently other shortcuts, like ssh aliases). Many systems use the dot to decide whether to do a global DNS lookup; if there aren't enough dots in there, the local domain gets appended. It's a lot like pathnames with the slash separator, where slash in front makes it an absolute path. What most people don't realise is that there are absolute DNS names too, which end with a period. If someone were to register the "search" top level domain, the URL would look like "http://search." Including the period. On /. of all places, this ought to be known.

Re:How about just using the dot?

[SuricouRaven]

DNS is delicate.

There was an issue a couple of years ago - I can't remember the details, but it involved printers ceasing to work suddenly without cause in some businesses. Offices where they just ceased to function.

Turned out that the printers had been running a check for firmware updates on boot - they tried to reach their manufacturer server each time, but only got a NXDOMAIN, as the model was no longer supported an the update server no longer maintained. Until the day one of the major ISPs decided to spoof non-existant domains to instead point to their own advert-laden 'helpful' search page. The printers thus tried to fetch their firmware update from that page and, getting a 400 response, tried to install it - but instead it just failed checksum, causing the printers to lock up in objection.

I can't recall the details any more, but you can probably look them up with enough googling. Easily fixed once you know the problem, but it shows just how delicate name lookup can be.

How many businesses have a server somewhere called 'search?' If a 'search' TLD were registered, queries would become ambiguous and traffic ends up going to the wrong place.

What about the existing dotless sites?

[dmesg0]

E.g. http://uz
Will they have to disable it?

Re:What about the existing dotless sites?

[Krenair]

More complete list here: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hoffine-already-dotless-02#section-2

hrm.

[berchca]

It strikes me as ironic that the company who has marginalized domain names is trying to hoard a bunch of TLDs.

(I mean, do you ever type in 'thingiwant.com,' or do you just toss 'thing I want' in the Google bar?)

Google profits from TLD confusion

[CODiNE]

After all with hundreds of TLDs added, who can remember where anything is at? Guess I'll have to google it.