Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
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.
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).
Not allowed by ICANN rules, but technically it would work. There is nothing preventing a root nameserver for the TLD to return an A/AAAA record. Not all applications would handle it properly I would guess. If you have a search suffix set this will be queried first, eg http://samsung could be http://samsung.linksysrouter and then fail to resolve. http://samsung. is completely valid.
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? " :-(