ICANN Welcomes the World

[MAllie]

How has this debate on the future of the Internet somehow got side tracked on to the economy of a Potato Republic that nearly went under last year?

Is that a reference to Ireland, RD? Why not simply say the name of the country, then?

I and JMCC are both members here and surely permitted to extend the discussion to an area of interest to us. It is, after all, about the tlds of various countries, and therefore relevant.

If I have got your message wrong, I do apologise.

 

[jmcc]

Frankly, you are missing the point to some degree here.

At this stage, I'm wondering what the point was.

The total numbers of registrations is not the only metric that matters. The key is the level of traction that these domains have with the users.

The utilisation is a far more important metric. With a website, it is possible to classify whether a site is being parked, is a holding page, is a redirect or is being actively used. Many registries will use very simplistic classifications (200/301/302/4nn) in this respect. The number of unique actively developed websites is the kernel for any TLD and it can be less than 20% of the number of domains registered in that TLD. Doing that kind of mapping for a ccTLD (one or two major languages) is easier than doing it for a gTLD (a lot of languages). Most of the time it involves learning the phrase "coming soon" in each of these languages.

Every two man operation in the UK has a .co.uk, many of them will never get any traffic to their websites and won't even know how to exploit their domain for an email address.

Many of them do not have a website and may never have a website. The e-mail problem is more complex because almost every hosting package has a default mailserver attached. It is almost impossible to establish whether that domain has ever been used for e-mail.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Rubber Duck]

At this stage, I'm wondering what the point was.

The utilisation is a far more important metric. With a website, it is possible to classify whether a site is being parked, is a holding page, is a redirect or is being actively used. Many registries will use very simplistic classifications (200/301/302/4nn) in this respect. The number of unique actively developed websites is the kernel for any TLD and it can be less than 20% of the number of domains registered in that TLD. Doing that kind of mapping for a ccTLD (one or two major languages) is easier than doing it for a gTLD (a lot of languages). Most of the time it involves learning the phrase "coming soon" in each of these languages.

Many of them do not have a website and may never have a website. The e-mail problem is more complex because almost every hosting package has a default mailserver attached. It is almost impossible to establish whether that domain has ever been used for e-mail.

Regards...jmcc

No but if you have ever tried contacting them it soon becomes obvious they are still using something provided by their ISP.

 

[bwhhisc]

The real reason that ICANN is doing this, in my opinion, is because long term trends would indicate that ccTLDs will dominate gTLDs in country level markets. That means that the gTLDs will decline as ccTLDs gain registrations. These trends mean that the ccTLDs will overtake .com in these country level markets too. Thus much of the growth in .com and the gTLDs is driven by people who are protecting their brands and by registrants in countries where the ccTLD is not yet dominant.
Regards...jmcc

I think your theory is wrong, especially in China and India. In these countries and many more, the future of the internet is mobile and with handheld devices. Dealing with international domainers for the past 4 years, most expect .com and cctlds to both be top of class in just about every market, especially Japan and China. Will have to wait and see in Russia, as .ru held most market and the new idn (RF) is to be released for sunrise in the next few months.

Just based on population statistics and number of internet users China is going to need a LOT of extensions to handle the potential number of websites....and that will extend beyond .com and .cn. I would expect way MORE use of .net, .biz, etc to fill the void, and that may be proven out with the already heavy registrations in these areas early in the game. As pointed out earlier, there are already 340,000,000 internet users in China and India is a sleeping giant once the mobile internet service reaches critical mass and costs continue to come down.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Is that a reference to Ireland, RD? Why not simply say the name of the country, then?

I and JMCC are both members here and surely permitted to extend the discussion to an area of interest to us. It is, after all, about the tlds of various countries, and therefore relevant.

If I have got your message wrong, I do apologise.

Yes, I am sure you both have a deep interest in the place, and I was being a flippant but the basic problem is:

Ireland Pop 4,203,200 Users 2,830,100 Penetrat'n 67.3% Growth 261.0 %

Asia Pop 3,808,070,503 Users 738,257,230 Penetrat'n 19.4 % Growth 545.9 %

And that is even ignoring Russia and the Middle East which are counted separately.

You might be interest in Ireland, but and Domainer with an International perspective is not going to get very excited.

 

[jmcc]

How has this debate on the future of the Internet somehow got side tracked on to the economy of a Potato Republic that nearly went under last year?

See those figures there - that's statistical evidence of the ccTLD switch in progress. The gTLDs are getting hammered and it is turning into a .com TLD/ccTLD market. Sometimes, it is more important to rely on the evidence than your opinion. As country level markets mature, this kind of switch to the local ccTLD happens. Any new IDN based extension will have to cope with the existing TLD/gTLD/ccTLD registration base and economic conditions.

There is a demand for IDNs in some countries as the recent .mobi Chinese landrush proved. The 01/October domain count for .mobi was 860001 domains. The 01/November/2009 count was 953142 domains. The hoster with the largest number of new .mobi registrations was shengshihui.com with 86343 domains - all of them IDN.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Rubber Duck]

See those figures there - that's statistical evidence of the ccTLD switch in progress. The gTLDs are getting hammered and it is turning into a .com TLD/ccTLD market. Sometimes, it is more important to rely on the evidence than your opinion. As country level markets mature, this kind of switch to the local ccTLD happens. Any new IDN based extension will have to cope with the existing TLD/gTLD/ccTLD registration base and economic conditions.

There is a demand for IDNs in some countries as the recent .mobi Chinese landrush proved. The 01/October domain count for .mobi was 860001 domains. The 01/November/2009 count was 953142 domains. The hoster with the largest number of new .mobi registrations was shengshihui.com with 86343 domains - all of them IDN.

Regards...jmcc

Yes, and that is dot Mobi, which doesn't even rank in most people's estimation as they are a complete newcomer.

I think your theory is wrong, especially in China and India. In these countries and many more, the future of the internet is mobile and with handheld devices. Dealing with international domainers for the past 4 years, most expect .com and cctlds to both be top of class in just about every market, especially Japan and China. Will have to wait and see in Russia, as .ru held most market and the new idn (RF) is to be released for sunrise in the next few months.

Just based on population statistics and number of internet users China is going to need a LOT of extensions to handle the potential number of websites....and that will extend beyond .com and .cn. I would expect way MORE use of .net, .biz, etc to fill the void, and that may be proven out with the already heavy registrations in these areas early in the game. As pointed out earlier, there are already 340,000,000 internet users in China and India is a sleeping giant once the mobile internet service reaches critical mass and costs continue to come down.

Yes, and as a sleeping Giant India ranks 4th with a User Penetration of just 7% behind China, US and Japan, but ahead of Brazil, Germany and the UK in that order.

 

[jmcc]

I think your theory is wrong, especially in China and India. In these countries and many more, the future of the internet is mobile and with handheld devices.

And there are 13 million or so .cn domains registered and perhaps as many as 500K .in domains. The spike in Chinese .mobi domains over the last month is interesting in respect of the mobile/handheld market.

Dealing with international domainers for the past 4 years, most expect .com and cctlds to both be top of class in just about every market, especially Japan and China.

And this concentration on .com and ccTLDs is exactly what the registration figures show. The other TLDs (net/org/biz/info) tend to fade as these markets become focused on com/ccTLD.

Will have to wait and see in Russia, as .ru held most market and the new idn (RF) is to be released for sunrise in the next few months.

The problem for these new IDNs is the numbers of domains registered in ccTLD of their target market and the com/gTLD domains registered in that market. It is also influenced by the economic conditions in those markets.

I would expect way MORE use of .net, .biz, etc to fill the void, and that may be proven out with the already heavy registrations in these areas early in the game.

And more use would result in an increase in registrations in these TLDs. I think that the primary concentration will be on .com and the ccTLDs and, perhaps to a lesser extent, .mobi. China and India have subdomains so it is possible that these ccTLDs could expand horizontally with more subdomains to accommodate the demand.

The .asia sTLD is an example of how difficult it is to establish a new TLD where there is active competition from strong ccTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

Yes, and that is dot Mobi, which doesn't even rank in most people's estimation as they are a complete newcomer.

Unlike these new IDNs?

Regards...jmcc

 

[Rubber Duck]

And there are 13 million or so .cn domains registered and perhaps as many as 500K .in domains. The spike in Chinese .mobi domains over the last month is interesting in respect of the mobile/handheld market.

And this concentration on .com and ccTLDs is exactly what the registration figures show. The other TLDs (net/org/biz/info) tend to fade as these markets become focused on com/ccTLD.

The problem for these new IDNs is the numbers of domains registered in ccTLD of their target market and the com/gTLD domains registered in that market. It is also influenced by the economic conditions in those markets.

And more use would result in an increase in registrations in these TLDs. I think that the primary concentration will be on .com and the ccTLDs and, perhaps to a lesser extent, .mobi. China and India have subdomains so it is possible that these ccTLDs could expand horizontally with more subdomains to accommodate the demand.

The .asia sTLD is an example of how difficult it is to establish a new TLD where there is active competition from strong ccTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

Unlike these new IDNs?

Regards...jmcc

The vast expansion in .cn was in ASCII which were sold as give away prices largely to Americans that think the Chinese speak English. These are now dropping very quickly now. Of course Americans also know that all Indians speak English, and most dot IN are not actually owned by Indians but foreign speculators desperately trying to flip them.

It might also have slipped your notice but co.uk is a sub-domain. The burning question in my mind is what happens their if the UK Government which reserved .UK for their own use actually decides to start selling TLDs to raise some much needed cash?

 

[jmcc]

The vast expansion in .cn was in ASCII which were sold as give away prices largely to Americans that think the Chinese speak English.

It was also a low(ish) priced domain so it essentially created a bubble extension where genuine growth is obscured by speculation. There was a wobble in .cn figures earlier this year but it wasn't the major cull that happens when bubble extensions burst.

Of course Americans also know that all Indians speak English, and most dot IN are not actually owned by Indians but foreign speculators desperately trying to flip them.

Again this was made worse by the domain hack element of .in ccTLD.

The burning question in my mind is what happens their if the UK Government which reserved .UK for their own use actually decides to start selling TLDs to raise some much needed cash?

A nightmare situation. It would result in the last fifteen years of domain growth and speculation in .uk happening over again over the space of a few months. It would also create problems for existing .co.uk registrants who may argue that they have rights to the .uk version of their existing .co.uk domain and this could create a minor landrush in .co.uk as new registrants try to a foothold if some kind of cut-off date is introduced. I don't know how Nominet would react though.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Rubber Duck]

A nightmare situation. It would result in the last fifteen years of domain growth and speculation in .uk happening over again over the space of a few months. It would also create problems for existing .co.uk registrants who may argue that they have rights to the .uk version of their existing .co.uk domain and this could create a minor landrush in .co.uk as new registrants try to a foothold if some kind of cut-off date is introduced. I don't know how Nominet would react though.

Regards...jmcc

Yes, but not an unplausible scenario, if the matter was raised in a national paper as to why the MPs have sole access to our TLD, and it was spiced up with a few quotes about Duck Moats, then I can see the MPs caving in on this very quickly. It is not as though they are making much use of it. But you are right and chaos would ensue. Of course for large corporation a few tens of thousand is not much here or there, but it still puts a fragile glass ceiling over the co.uk extension in my opinion.

 

[Theo]

You want a used car salesman, Rubber Ducky is the one.

So your wife's Czech and she can read English, that's good.

Is this your argument about supporting ICANN's tower of TLD Babel? Because it's nothing but that, a tower of Babel where noone can talk to eachother - once you lose common ground, there is no way to establish communication. And in today's Internet era, communication means: .com

Think about it, Ducky. Nobody wants to see "jihad.alsaudia" in Arabic, outside of the sword-yielding inhabitants of this friendly-to-the-US nation. Happy Veterans Day, by the way - all of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi.

In other words, IDN domains with the extra cookie of IDN TLD offer nothing to the Internet. Your claim that people don't speak, don't know or don't care about English, is the most laughable argument that keeps on giving - to the "ASCII" community, that is.

If people didn't know, speak, understand or cared to type a TLD in English - or a full qualifying domain for that matter - China would still be making plastic duckies for 2 cents a piece. Oh wait, they still do that.

So, more business for the Chinese means USING English web sites and URL's instead of some "majong" TLD that Westerners cannot type. Internet = International Network, not Intergalactic Nonsense,

 

[Rubber Duck]

I don't know how in your twisted mind you ever though people who understand no Chinese were going to be able to read Chinese sites. Surely the language of the URL is but a minor impediment, or do you actually believe Chinese sites are written in Engrish? You simply imagine that you stand to lose something that never existed, but the price you demand is that others don't have the benefit of what you have always taken for granted. You truly are an evil little man.

You want a used car salesman, Rubber Ducky is the one.

So your wife's Czech and she can read English, that's good.

Is this your argument about supporting ICANN's tower of TLD Babel? Because it's nothing but that, a tower of Babel where noone can talk to eachother - once you lose common ground, there is no way to establish communication. And in today's Internet era, communication means: .com

Think about it, Ducky. Nobody wants to see "jihad.alsaudia" in Arabic, outside of the sword-yielding inhabitants of this friendly-to-the-US nation. Happy Veterans Day, by the way - all of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi.

In other words, IDN domains with the extra cookie of IDN TLD offer nothing to the Internet. Your claim that people don't speak, don't know or don't care about English, is the most laughable argument that keeps on giving - to the "ASCII" community, that is.

If people didn't know, speak, understand or cared to type a TLD in English - or a full qualifying domain for that matter - China would still be making plastic duckies for 2 cents a piece. Oh wait, they still do that.

So, more business for the Chinese means USING English web sites and URL's instead of some "majong" TLD that Westerners cannot type. Internet = International Network, not Intergalactic Nonsense,

 

[dn-101]

Let's try realistic projection for IDNs

At the current rate of market penetration/acceptance it will take IDNs 20 years to reach the levels of .biz or .kz traction.

But in 20 years the web will be a slightly diff place than it is today. And chances are neither your ascii nor idn will matter

.kz - the land of Borat :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Rubber Duck]

Let's try realistic projection for IDNs

At the current rate of market penetration/acceptance it will take IDNs 20 years to reach the levels of .biz or .kz traction.

But in 20 years the web will be a slightly diff place than it is today. And chances are neither your ascii nor idn will matter

.kz - the land of Borat :smilewinkgrin:

This is precisely the kind of imperialistic condescension that made an event like 9/11 almost inevitable. No amount of nuclear armaments is going to protect the US from its own stupidity.

 

[dn-101]

But, perhaps, it will save this writer from the vicious brit bastard who was openly threatened with mutilation and murder here at DNF

 

[jmcc]

Let's try realistic projection for IDNs

At the current rate of market penetration/acceptance it will take IDNs 20 years to reach the levels of .biz or .kz traction.

Well the numbers of xn-- domains in the main TLDs as of 01/Nov/2009 are as follows:
.com: 683958
.net: 191184
.org: 18423
.biz: 23398
.info: 25683
.mobi: 86343

I'm not sure about market acceptance though.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Theo]

What's the matter, Ducky, your plastic dream is covered with toxic Chinese paint?

I didn't mention "Engrish" if that's what you speak preaching about the "benefits" of IDN. Like a lot of things coming out of the ICANN "club med" is not an innovation. Which is fine, because we can dissect it and place it in the appropriate trash bin.

You, however, my little plastic yellow friend, have no clue about what really matters in this business; and that's those who actually conduct it, not those that just talk about it.

Quack.

 

[Gerry]

Is that a reference to Ireland, RD? Why not simply say the name of the country, then?

I wish I could apologize for that comment, but I didn't make it.

You're a valued member to this forum so take comfort in that.

Its actually a shame that some people look at a flag or a location and take that as a reflection for their true feelings.

 

[Rubber Duck]

What's the matter, Ducky, your plastic dream is covered with toxic Chinese paint?

I didn't mention "Engrish" if that's what you speak preaching about the "benefits" of IDN. Like a lot of things coming out of the ICANN "club med" is not an innovation. Which is fine, because we can dissect it and place it in the appropriate trash bin.

You, however, my little plastic yellow friend, have no clue about what really matters in this business; and that's those who actually conduct it, not those that just talk about it.

Quack.

No, but I personally avoid buying anything from the US because I know that indirectly I am support evil little sods like you. Unless, your marketing techniques increasing resort to physically restraining people and shoving your products down their throats, then it is difficult to see how American Industry is ever going to recover. By contrast I have always found Chinese goods to be very reasonably priced and of high quality.