What ICANN's New Plan for Unlimited Domain Extensions Means for Today's TLDs

[Duke]

The ICANN unlimited extension plan is the sole topic of DNJournal's June newsletter that was emailed to opt in subscribers last night. It is also available online: http://www.dnjournal.com/newsletters/2008/june.htm

Interesting comments from Rick Schwartz, Dan Pulcrano (owner of most major US city domains in .com like SanFrancisco.com, LosAngeles.com, etc.), Michael Castello (PalmSprings.com, Nashville.com, Cost.com, etc), Kevin Ohashi and others.

[Irish31]

Very good read. Nice to hear from some people at the top of the industry (and giving reasons why).

[INVIGOR]

I saw all the treads and opinions and just have to say that I'm relieved to hear from some of the "top names" in the business confirm what I already thought. The .coms are simply going to be more cemented in their lead position as the ccTLD and vTLD flood the the secondary market. The more extensions they dilute the market with, the more recognizable and therefore more valuable the .coms will be.

AMEN to dot coms!

[acesfull]

Consider the possibilities...

rooms.hotels
room.hotel
rooms.hotel
room.hotels
cartoons.disney
coke.pepsi
view.assymcgee
myass.hurts
scratch.itch
car.tires
funny.cars
sellyour.domain
buynew.domains
keepyour.coms
thatis.forme
internet.dotcom
itsjustabad.idea
itwont.work
stupid.imo
dumb.imho
moremoneyfor.icann
thepossibilitiesare.endless

any.more ?

[Ownager]

hopefully the .com's are here to stay.. but you never know what the future holds.

[Adam Dicker]

actually I like .lastnames but will make emails confusing.

-=DCG=-

[DomainMagnate]

Good stuff, how do I subscribe to the newsletter? Couldn't find a link

[acesfull]

First of all, this seems to be nothing more than a massive money grab by ICANN. Secondly, this seems to be the most ill-conceived idea. It's like NEW.NET on steroids, or The Wild wild west Gone Wild. The main problem is that web addresses won't be recognized as web addresses, unless you put "www." in front of whatever.whatever, which is a terrible solution.

What makes .com so valuable is that it is the #1 brand of the Internet. Without saying "Internet Address," .com unambiguously conveys "Internet Address." Even after years, .info, .us and .biz are confusing to many people. Who thinks Goodyear would want Goodyear.tires when they've got Goodyear.com and GoodyearTires.com? Not only would the introduction of unlimited TLDs increase the value of .com, it would also diminish the value of every other non-dot-com TLD.

By the way, when the hell did they start talking about doing all of this? Was it public? Who are the individuals pushing this through? Did this go through some proper approval process, or are they trying to rush this through before the public and business community has a chance to provide input? Think of all of the entrepreneurs coming up with TLD business ideas. Do the individual TLD operators sell second-level domains to the public? Do they have to follow the current dispute policies? What happens when they go out of business and the TLD just goes away? Imagine all of the legal issues and complications. Man, this is going to be entertaining!

[500,000]

I think these new extentions will be good for countries.

[Tom K.]

Just my 2 cents:

1. New extensions will be great for developers as this will create a higher demand for content development and content management. In particular, demand for low cost development will enable many upstarts to enter the market.

2. They will facilitate faster rate of growth of the Internet population.

3. They may give spammers a lot more to work with, so spam will likely be on the rise.

4. I agree with the views stated in the article that the new extensions will have little to no impact on .com. "Dot com" is practically synonymous with the terms "Internet" and "Web".

Anyways, I appreciated the conclusion in that we need to keep balanced and although it can be fun predicting the future of the Internet with the new tld's, don't let it distract you from the issues at hand.

Thanks for the great read.

[Duke]

Good stuff, how do I subscribe to the newsletter? Couldn't find a link

http://www.dnjournal.com/newsletter-signup.htm

[NetworkMsia]

Thanks for the superb article.

[David G]

4. I agree with the views stated in the article that the new extensions will have little to no impact on .com.

I respect that view but must strongly disagree with it.

If www.amazon www.ford www.toyota (and many other big firms) become their internet brand instead of www.amazon.com www.ford.com www.toyota.com why would that not seriously erode traffic going to dot-com? I am sure it will, possibly big time in the future.

Personally, I feel the only established tld which will be less impacted is dot-org (also my personal favorite). I can't see too many current org's buying their own tld and feel they will mostly stay with dot-org due to it's major trust connotation and branding success with the major element of trust due to the non-commercial tld aspect.