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Say Hello To Branded Internet Addresses (cnet.com)
On September 29, Google published a new blog which uses .google domain rather the standard .com. It seems the company may have inspired other companies to tout their brand names in the digital realm as well. According to a report on CNET, we have since seen requests for domain names such as .kindle, .apple, .ibm, .canon, and .samsung. And it's not just tech companies that are finding this very attractive, other domain requests include .ford, .delta, .hbo, .mcdonalds, and .nike. From the report: Approval, of course, is just a first step. It's not clear how enthusiastic most companies will be about the new names. So far, Google is the eager beaver. What's fun for Google is a daunting financial commitment to others. A $185,000 application fee and annual $30,000 operation fee will keep mom-and-pop shops away from their own domains. Still, plenty of businesses other than Google see the new domain names as a good investment. Branded domains can add distinction to an internet address, and renting out generic top-level domain (GTLD) names can potentially be a lucrative business. At a January auction, GMO Registry bid $41.5 million to win rights to sell .shop domain names. And in July, Nu Dot Co won .web with a bid of $135 million. Hundreds of new top-level domain names are approved. The single most popular in use is .xyz. Hundreds of new top-level domain names are approved. The single most popular in use is .xyz. Where does all the money go? To a nonprofit organization called ICANN -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The organization oversees internet plumbing on behalf of companies, governments and universities, as well as the general public.
The summary misses some important answers to questions like "how many top-level domains are approved?" and "What is the single most popular in use"? Once the summary answers these questions I will take it seriously.
What a luxury! Having a domain being only a TLD. But will that work, using the TLD without any subdomain, i.e. no '.' dot? That's likely to break a lot of applications.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
This french bank has been doing exactly this since a few months now ...
It's not really a "branded internet address" - it's a branded TLD.
I don't really have a problem with it. They'll be expensive (as they should be) and should get extra scrutiny before being approved.
Who the hell edited this?
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Just people some idiot paid that much to run that name, it doesn't mean that's what it's worth (except to that one seller, that one time).
How do you profit from, say .xyz? By selling domains at .xyz. If those domains are expensive, nobody will touch them. If they are cheap, you'll never make your money back.
You would need to sell tens of millions of TLD addresses to recoup the money invested, even over a ten year period. That's unlikely. Hell, by that time, TLD's might be entirely dead and we've all moved on to something else.
And ".scum" for some of my "friends" in banking.
...miserably
Now, it's going to make it even easier to filter shit out.
Don't forget to mention that the single most popular in use is .xyz. Don't mention that they gave away hundreds of thousands of .xyz domains for free to people who didn't even ask for them to get there. Fake it till you make it.
About half the users in my network just go to Google and type "youtube" anyways. When I say, "Go to the address bar, and...", it's a foreign language to them. And mobile devices now hide the address bar, sometimes making it incredibly frustrating and difficult trying to locate it. With half of all users just Google the link, and the other half expect it to be a .com, why pay that much money for a specialized web address?
Anyone who calls a Domain Name an "Internet Address" probably doesn't know very much about either...
I wonder if having to keep tabs on all these TLDs that seem to be created by anyone who fancies it is putting a heirarchical system designed to accomodate at first only a few (then expanded to a few hundred for country domains) under strain at the root server level? Sure technology advances, but the design hasn't really changed and I wonder if its still suited.
Anyone who calls a Domain Name an "Internet Address" probably doesn't know very much about either.
Provided that you can "rent" subdomains the same way we do now for ".com" and the like, $30,000 is not that much (just need 3,000 subdomains applicants)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
1. .web for $135 million? Everything is a web site, and nothing serious is going to want ".web". Are we on .com boom #2, or is this a new way to do underhanded things with money?
2. Hear that? That's the sound of me blocking branded TLDs. As long as enough admins do it early enough, they'll be a liability.
Literally Microsoft office could catch the errors these "editors" miss.
I've been using the internet for a long time but help me out here. What is the goal here?
www.ibm.ibm? or just www.ibm?
ford.ford? www.cars.ford? drive.a.ford?
gmail.google instead of gmail.google.com?
You can mark me down as a firm "whatever".
I'm a 2000 man.
Where is the money going to? Who approves the applications and what are the mechanisms for appeals and disputes?
What sort of framework is there to ensure, the fees are not excessive and the services thus purchased — of high quality?
Is it done by the best means known — via vigorous competition — or somehow else? How?
Is this new mechanism related to and/or enabled by the transfer of control of the Internet towards an international body? And, if so, is that the reason, Google and other mega-corporations pushed for the transfer so hard?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The company Google has copywrite protection for their name. However, if they establish TLD .google then google or Google or GOOGLE (since domain names are not case sensitive) cannot be copywrite protected. So anybody should be able to use google without the company Google's permission or complaint.
ThisIsStupid.google
Idiots.at.google
They also should not be able to refuse to register a domain: Use.Bing.Not.Google
I run a mail server and have gotten thousands upon thousands of emails from domains ending in .xyz and they are ALL spam.
Ditto for all of the other new TLD's.
Seems like a race to the bottom if you ask me.
What does Icann do with all the money ?
I'm looking for a .com domain name and it looks this site was already registered but is expired for more than 60 days (according to whois.net).
The whois of icann does not know about this domain name (WTF ? how could it be ?)
The actual (or should I say the ancient) registrar says I can't register for a nominal fee but I can spend 70 dollars for them to try to get it with no guarantee.
For me it's no more than a crook system.
Should the registrar be allowed to hold a domain name forever ? Do they pay for this ? Why the icann whois is outdated ?
If I fill a dispute to try to get this domain name, How could I be sure the croo.. registrar will reregister it to sell it to me for $$$$.
If the domain name was supposed to be release (nd is not) and I'm the first to candidate, will I get it or could the old registrar to sell it for auction ?
This is going to create a TON of unnecessary subdomains just to get catchphrase addresses like Drive.A.Ford as someone else mentioned. This plays right into java's hands as an easy obfuscation techniques for links. You won't be able to easily tell if it's a object, reference, string, or an actual url. ICANN just gave virus writers a whole new avenue of creative obfuscation. Throw in a bunch of unicode % characters like XSS kids love to do and you'll get an obscenely long url that most admins won't care to decipher.
not.a.string(",xyz");
Imagine.a.command.and.control.subdomain.chain.for.a.botnet.embedded.in.java.that.is.actually.a.link.and.not.a.string
Just a stupid example why this could be a bad idea if subdomain chaining for cheesy catchphrase addresses becomes the norm.
Yes it's a good idea in order to open up the address space a lot but everything has a pro and con. I'm sure ICANN thought this issue through long and hard before lining their pockets with billions (sarcasm).
I received a letter from my bank and it had a "link" to their website, i bet 99% of the people who got that mail didn't realize banco.bradesco was actually a website. It didn't have a http or www that most people now are familiar with, it was just banco.bradesco, you could think they missed a space if you were not careful.
Years having to tell people they don't need to write http:/// now they "changed" it and people will begging to ask again - "banco.bradesco? So www.branco.bradesco? How about http, this one have that thing too? How do i open it? Oh just a regular site? " :-(
The U.S. government screwed this up royally when it put its site for people to get their free credit report on the domain annualcreditreport.com. The credit agencies all set up similar sites with similar domains, which would give you your credit report but require you to submit a credit card and would try to subscribe you to their credit monitoring services. For years, Google searches would return these spoofing sites instead of the real one as the top result, doubtless due to aggressive SEO. It seems to have stabilized on the real one as the top result now, though I don't know if that's due to Google clamping down on SEO exploits, or if they just hard-coded the government site as the top result. All of this could have been prevented if the government set it up as a .gov TLD, since companies can't set up sites under that domain.
.apple, .ibm, .canon, .samsung TLD would prevent spoofed sites. I tend to side with a strong hierarchical structure to domain names (company.com, organization.org, network.net, etc). But not everyone realized the importance of nabbing a .com domain early on, resulting in headaches which have done nothing but make lawyers rich. Granting an organizations-specific TLD if the organization is large enough may be a solution to this, provided you also prohibit said organization from taking over similarly named .com sites like applesucks.com. Once you own a TLD that only you can make sites on, it's clear whether or not a site is your "real" site, so name confusion and trademark dilution claims should no longer apply.
Likewise, a
The actual thing that matters in the DNS is authority. Not being under a TLD means there is one less entity that can screw you. That's the point.
I've long held onto a naïve dream that we might achieve SOME level of security by teaching users how to read domain names, enabling status bars (note: FUCK ALL CURRENT BROWSER MAKERS that turn them off by default) so users can look at URLs before clicking on them, and NOT blindly trusting that little green padlock (oh look! I'm securely connected to totally-legit-bank.ru) but for that to happen, domain names MUST be human-parseable. I don't expect everyone to become a cybersecurity expert, but if you can learn and follow a basic rules of traffic safety, you can learn follow a few basic rules of online safety.* Oh well. Now I guess I can spend my time dreaming of riding ponies and winning the lottery.
No sense mentioning how much harder it will make it for everyone who writes make-this-FQDN-a-link code. Lots of systems will make google.com clickable but I doubt anyone BUT google will do the same for blog.google. Or we can just render EVERYTHING with a dot as a link. :-/
* Please spare me the obvious jokes about OMG EVERYONE IS TEH WORST DRIVERS!!!!!11
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Q. Why are gTLD's necessary?
A. They're not.
But!.... They're a great idea for whoever in ICANN came up with them:
So far $233 million in auction proceeds (after expenses). And it's not yet ear marked for anything.
https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/auctions/proceeds
Compare that to their P&L and they are flush with cash. I wonder what they're going to do with it all? I suggest raises, raises for everybody!
From eyeballing their site, there's still roughly another 140 gTLDs that are already set to go to auction. Some big ones too, like BANK/MONEY/INSURANCE/LOVE/AUTO.... etc... They could easily hit billions in cash from this. Compare that kind of money to their existing P&L which is showing about $40m/yr:
https://www.icann.org/en/about/financials/new-gtld-program-cash-flow-09sep11-en.pdf
So that answers the question 'Why?'.
Google will still make you pay to compete for ranking for your trademarks unless you successfully sue them. Why drink this koolaid unless Google is going to stop profiting off of trademark infringement.
this is because of the new ICANN system. A complete disgrace. Abhorrent.
Proof read your articles before you post, damn it! Sure, it takes you extra time to read it again, but it doesn't waste the time of all your readers by having them read the same stuff twice, then wonder what the hell...?
"Hundreds of new top-level domain names are approved. The single most popular in use is .xyz. Hundreds of new top-level domain names are approved. The single most popular in use is .xyz."
Since you won't catch your own mistakes, get SOMEONE ELSE to proof read!
Stop domain grabbing and forbid to use domains, which do not match the purpose.
a .com domain should be commercial, some american site should use .us. Use other country codes for offers in the country (i.e. bmw.de for german BMW site, bmw.us for the american one linking to bmw.com for some online shop with car parts), restrict .info to non-affiliated information sites, etc.
With such a rule, people could finally get free TLDs again. Try to get a four letter domain. Everything already registered, mostly redirecting to the main domain. Let some organization with initials bmw have bmw.org! some person with initials BMW gets bmw.name and bmw.email is reserved for a mail provider.
TLDs have failed. People just use country codes or .com and redirect others. Only exceptions are people using cool domain hacks (think of del.icio.us) or nice domains in the new namespaces like hilbert.space. But that are mostly nerds, anyway.
And who exactly decides if it's approved? What terms and conditions do they apply to it?
What a fucking mess. Bring structure back and enforce it. ( so you dont end up with random for profit product companies grabbing .net or org TLDs, for example )
When the hell is DNS going to die and get replaced with vastly superior newsgroup hierarchy?
Kills off need for crappy censoring search indexers, left-to-right order is way more logical, less overhead server-wise. .xyz, being banned at least once a week across the world.
Easier to group sites. Objectively easier to manage spam issues.
Easier to prevent clickjacking simply through the order being reversed. A common issue with clickjacking was stuff like facebook.com.profile.com or some other nonsense. Sub-domains are THE worst thing to happen to DNS.
Custom TLDs are actually lesser since they will be expensive as hell and generally more strict, besides a few well known scrubby ones like
tld.service.domain.sub-domains/dir/file.ext .com noise again.
Beeeeautifu'.
tld will point only to nations, be it countries, or even space stations and planets in the future.
Service is where all the tv, bank, shop, charity, web, app, software, email and other such nonsense now goes. No generic service. Fuck that
The other technical hurdles already have been worked out.
Newsgroups are only so 'shitty' because they are niche.
You know like Prince did?
The URL formerly known as http://www.google.com could be represented by six free-hand squiggles.