Google Taking Over New TLDs

bobo the hobo writes: In the corner of the internet where people care about DNS, there is a bit of an uproar at Google's application for over a hundred new top-level domains, including .dev, .lol, .app, .blog, .cloud and .search. Their application includes statements such as: "By contrast, our application for the .blog TLD describes a new way of automatically linking new second level domains to blogs on our Blogger platform – this approach eliminates the need for any technical configuration on the part of the user and thus makes the domain name more user friendly." They also mention limiting usage of .dev to Google only: "Second-level domain names within the proposed gTLD are intended for registration and use by Google only, and domain names under the new gTLD will not be available to the general public for purchase, sale, or registration. As such, [Google's shell company] intends to apply for an exemption to the ICANN Registry Operator Code of Conduct as Google is intended to be the sole registrar and registrant."

Comments

Suspicions Confirmed

[Anonymous Coward]

Google must be using .dev internally. This move is only to prevent others from confusing things.

who cares ?

[itzly]

If I need the web site of a church, I wouldn't try name-of-church.church, but I would just search for name-of-church in google. Who cares about the URL ?

Re:who cares ?

[ShanghaiBill]

I wouldn't try name-of-church.church, but I would just search for name-of-church in google.

But how do you know which is the real site? If I am looking for Foobar Inc's website, and I see www.foobar.com, I can be pretty sure that is legitimate. But if I see foobar.info, foobar.dev, foobar.sucks, I don't know if they are legitimate or not. The proliferation of TLD's just pollutes the namespace and sows confusion. They can be used for fraud, or they can be used to extort money from businesses that feel they have to lock down more and more domains. The drawbacks outweigh the benefits, especially as more and more are added.

Re:who cares ?

[itzly]

If I am looking for Foobar Inc's website, and I see www.foobar.com, I can be pretty sure that is legitimate

Maybe legitimate, but there may be 10 companies in the world called 'foobar', so you still don't know if you've got the right one.

Re:who cares ?

[dryeo]

Nissan is a better example, try nissan.com

Greedy bastards.

[The Rizz]

I think their application for .dev to be Google-only highlights a major problem with a company like this having control over any TLDs: They intend to use their control to crowd out competitors in a monopolistic fashion. That no non-Google developer can register a .dev is akin to saying that if you don't work for Google you're not really a developer. The only TLD restriction I would be OK with Google having reserved entirely for personal use is .google - and even that I'd be wary of without concrete rule for revoking the exclusive use if a good reason comes up.

Re:Greedy bastards.

[aardvarkjoe]

That no non-Google developer can register a .dev is akin to saying that if you don't work for Google you're not really a developer.

This doesn't make much sense. No developers have a .dev URL today, so obviously nobody associates the two that way right now. And if it's restricted to Google developers, that association is never going to be formed in the future either.

Re:Greedy bastards.

[allo]

.dev was never reserved. so use .dev.local, which is reserved for your LAN.

And no one cares

[ugen]

I am watching the "new generation" use the internet/web browser. They don't do it the way we (I?) did. They have little concept of "url" or web site address. Any resource they access is entered into the ever-present search box or "magic combo url bar", as series of search terms or a common name. They rely on the (non-standartized but helpful) search subsystem (usually, Google, but not always) to bring them to the right place. Domain names with their formal fixed format are not part of their use pattern, and I don't expect that to change.

So, let it be .whatever.

Re:And no one cares

[swillden]

Well, then that's their limitation, not mine. I am tired of this trend of dumbing things down to the lowest possible.

Damn straight. It's like all these stupid GUI interfaces. I mean, I can see using a graphical interface if you're editing photos or something, but for reading and writing text? It's ridiculous and just makes it so that stupid people can do it without having to understand anything.

It all started with visual text editors, you know? Line editing was good enough, heck, you could argue that it made things too easy, too. What was really good was when we used toggle switches to enter data and read the output from a sequence of lights. If you can't mentally translate binary to ASCII you don't deserve the power of computation.

</sarcasm>

Re: Concentration of power is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd

Re:do no evil

[VernonNemitz]

Perhaps they should be asking for a ".google" gTLD, for that purpose, instead of trying to monopolize a generic identifier.

Re: Concentration of power is evil

[fahrbot-bot]

DHT will replace DNS

Dihydrotestosterone will replace DNS? Just great, now we'll all go bald.

Re:do no evil

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Domain squatting is over. I, for one, welcome our new entire TLD squatting overlords. </sarcasm>

Re:Monopolistic: Do no evil?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Now will ICANN put its foot down

It had better hope so, because giving entire TLDs to specific big companies could easily be the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of the rest of the world accepting US-led administration of the general Internet. There's plenty of scepticism already, but organisations like ICANN are tolerated because frankly no-one has much of a better idea or wants to take on the responsibility. However, it is not difficult to think of a better idea than letting big businesses rewrite the established rules in arguably the most important address space in the world today for their own benefit.

All the more reason

[RightwingNutjob]

that the new TLDs were a stupid idea and the only reason they were implemented is that the beancounters are in charge instead of the car guys.

Re:All the more reason

[msobkow]

The new TLDs are a cash grab and nothing more. Not only for ICANN, but for every company that manages to buy up a gTLD.

Basically, the people buying up these gTLDs are hoping to cash in on companies wanting to register .searchterm domains. Which, in my books, is nonsense. I don't trust any of these new domains to be anything but spam traps and phishing expeditions. Given the options in search results, I would always go to the .com, .org, or .net address over a gTLD.

Re:Monopolistic: Do no evil?

[Dagger2]

I might be guessing wrong here, but I'm thinking the primary intention of these new TLDs was to earn ICANN shitloads of money. It costs $185,000 just to apply for one, and $25,000/year to keep it.

Every Fortune 500 company doing the same thing would be a dream come true for them.

Re:.dev

[lgw]

I think .dev should be like example.com: not able to register so DEVELOPERS (re: NOT GOOGLE) can use like, [mydomain].dev to develop, and not have to create wonky local host names.

RFC 2606 reserves 4 TLDs for this purpose: .test .example .invalid .localhost

I've always used .test for domains for QA/test deployments. It also reserves the example.* second level domain name across all TLDs.

I think there are some other reserved TLDs, including ".xy" and some 63-character name that was something like "sixtythreecharacterdomainnamefortestingpurposes" , but I can't find the RFC. Anyone?