I don't consider this a surprise at all. I see these new ads for things like ".digital" and ".media" and the only thing I can think of is using them for vanity, such as xyzcompany.media and then using that internally.
It's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.
To know that abc.media is a media company while abc.auto is a car company would be good for the user. It makes them less likely to click the wrong link. Really, more TLDs should just provide a finer grain of information to the previous '.com is a company and .org is an organisation'. There's no 'pollution' if you're only refining an idea. It's not like .com is going away.
Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as far as what domain points a website? What is the benefit in having fewer TLDs?
Click a link? Where? 99% of the people just Google for stuff and rarely even look at the domain names anymore. They would click a link in Google search results and Google would already filter if it's a car or media company you are looking for.
The only use case where domain name is actually used is when you need to tell someone to go to some website or give them your e-mail over the phone. Especially if it's your website. New TLDs are still fresh and people get confused. If it doesn't end with .com, they want to add .com themselves. You need to spend time and energy explaining - which would take a lot longer than just having an extra word in proper .com domain.
I guess people will get used to new TLDs in time. But that time is yet to come.
I wouldn't worry about that too much. The general public concept of the Internet is really not all that old (15-20 years). People will adjust remarkably quickly.
host/domain name is way to overabused, people should be using info resouce to find the site they are looking for. This way chrome stepped in the right direction moving people away from domains. There can be other software/internet constructs to navigate to right result, domain names are just vanity plates. It helps it if it easier to type the domain up but only for maybe top 10 sites that you use. Those sites are already there and are well known. for the rest autocomplete, bookmarks and history are used.
what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error. Granted this is not how most users use firefox host tab. However it is clear case where corporate greed breaks
organically grown infrastructure, in our office we use 8.8.8.8 and thats how I know about it.
what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error.
Domains can't have spaces, so if you type as such, you'll still get a search in any browser (that has search-in-URL-bar enabled, of course).
What kind of realistic search query without spaces and ending in ".dog" do you see yourself doing?
".com" forever? There is no reason we can have better naming systems. Consider ".io". It's often used by startups and signals quite a lot about a domain.
What is a "domain"? Its a name attached to some organization and an entry in a database. The problem is you have middle-men controlling that database, which means its structure can't change.
I understand that the current situation is a bit of a money grab, but what is the rational for TLDs not being arbitrary in the first place? Isn't it all just letters anyways?
Not at all arbitrary. Some organizations do a much better job than others maintaining, developing and generally being good Internet citizens. We've had much good come from the Dutch, German and Swedish TLDs for example (but also many others).
They also have a self interest in handling conflicts responsibly and being proactive about new laws, and the juridical status of domain ownership, because they're in it for the long run. I wish I could say the same about for example Verisign...
I think it would be useful if the companies buying the TLDs were not allowed to buy more than 100 or so of 2nd level domains within that TLD and forced the price to be something non-trivial like $30.
Then owning all the 2nd level domains would be prohibitively expensive and would actually be useful for people coming up with a good domain name.
This is not surprising but I fail to see the downside. The internet is complex already. The new top level domains won't add much to that.
I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs)," he said.
I run a lot of websites and it was a pain to find good domain names in the last 15 years. With all the new TLDs that problem is completely gone.
There will be a time when the multitude of TLDs won't bother anyone. Limiting TLDs doesn't add security. Educating people about the dangers of the internet does.
Yeah a bit of pain, but at least you prevent some confusions, like "is it fr.microsoft or microsoft.software?" What if it happens that your company name is registered for another TLD and people start seeing it as a legit instance of your service?
What if you're a bank and somebody gets a TLD like "yourbank.bank" with valid SSL and starts fishing people from yourbank.com?
It is a shakedown. Companies already have to buy their trademark domains on multiple TLD just to avoid litigating them constantly. Now they will have to buy them on hundreds of TLD. Doesn't it mean anything that registrars were the only people asking for this?
Companies already have to buy their trademark domains on multiple TLD just to avoid litigating them constantly. Now they will have to buy them on hundreds of TLD.
Either that, or they'll finally realize it's futile and stop that nonsense.
Exactly. If I run a business at `10 High Street` I don't set up shop in every town and city on every road called `High Street`. If people go to number 10 in their town, they'll search again if they can't find my shop if that's what they're looking for.
Our IT guy has actually just blackholed all mail from any of the new TLDs. I don't know exactly what he did, but I suspect it's just a whitelist containing "TLDs from before the Great TLD Expansion." I don't think I've ever seen a legitimate website from one of the new TLDs, and to be honest I'm still suspicious of most country code TLDs.
The new TLDs are a massive problem disguised as a solution in search of a problem.
They change almost nothing. We had many TLDs before, we have many TLDs now. Any system not designed to be resilient to many TLDs and multiple ways of reaching an IP is the real problem.
There's some spectrum of legitimacy, perhaps unfair. When I see ".com" I know it's a website. When I see ".co" I think I'm being phished. When I see ".software" I'm confused. When I see ".ninja" I wonder what the heck is going on.
There is absolutely no reason for a company to "have to buy them on hundreds of TLDs". That's absurd. But this is why we have the URDP system in place. If someone does actually purchase a domain that includes your trademark, you have options like sending a C&D or using the UDRP system.
Using the udrp system is expensive, it's less expensive to just give in and lease example.bike and example.sexy and example.ninja, rather than let someone else get it and fight them over it when it happens.
You could also just get people to give up the TLDs they're not using.
I find it somewhat depressing that emailing folks about domain names they're not using results in either a) being ignored or b) being asked to pay $40,000.
I'm of the view if you're sitting on names that you're keeping around exclusively because you think they could net you a windfall in the future then you're a bit of an internet twat.
You could say the same about holding on to property you're not using, but people resist the obvious solution: higher property tax, or in the case of domains higher yearly fees.
The high price was an excellent sign that they were overly scarce (for an otherwise limitless resource), and that more were needed.
I think the new gTLDs are great. Most of them aren't exorbitantly expensive, and generally speaking they free you up to have an address on the big wild internet that makes way more sense than the contrived naming conventions we resorted to using in the past (eg: get[???].com, [???]app.com, both of which I can think of prime, famous examples in real world use). Is [???].app really better? Yeah, probably.
>> You could also just get people to give up the TLDs they're not using.
I think you're confused, and probably mean "give up the domains" they're not using. Not "give up the TLDs".
This is not a viable option, though. Even though someone may think they're not using the domain, there's a good chance they could be using it (like using it for email even though the a record doesn't resolve to anything) or they could be using it as an investment.
Asking someone to give up a domain that "they're not using" is like asking someone to give up the vacant lot they're not using. It's real estate.
I'm not confused but you're right, I did mean to type domains rather than TLDs.
Anyways, I'm actually arguably in favour or a Land Value Tax. Land is a super fininte resource and holding onto it for no reason other than as an investment screws over anybody who isn't there first. This is great if you have land, for whatever reason, but not to great if you grow up poor and want to live anywhere near your place of work in a place like London where the property market is completely broken.
The domains landscape is similar, except that it is indeed easier to create new TLDs than manage the mess of domain speculation.
What do you propose as the alternative? Should the first person who wants to use the domain get it? What if their project isn't used much or they stop maintaining it? What if it really sucks? What if they have plans to use it but they haven't done anything for years?
There isn't a good alternative to the way it currently works. Allowing domain owners to sell their domains results in domains going to those companies that are successful enough to afford them.
I have a few nice names I get regular emails about. I have one such name where the guys found where I worked and figured out how to reach my office phone. It was a bit annoying, but I told them I had plans for the domain.
> I find it somewhat depressing that emailing folks about domain names they're not using results in either a) being ignored or b) being asked to pay $40,000.
Some domains that appear unused are actually being used.
I've got a very minimal, largely neglected, web presence on my domain, but would not even consider selling it unless the price was very very high.
That's because I am using it--for email. If I were to sell my domain I'd have to update my information with thousands of sites, companies, and individuals.
That's not something I'd be willing to undertake lightly. Any place that has my email that I forget to update is a place where my account could be easily hijacked.
Which reinforces the point. There are two companies (at least) called Apple. They are both allowed to have the same name because they are in different industries.
If we only allow companies to have ".com" then which of these two companies, both called Apple, would have "apple.com"?
Having multiple TLDs allows for disambiguation. It's a good thing.
I like some of the ones like .ninja, .xyz, and .space just because they're cheap more interesting then .me which is what used to pop up a lot for personal projects I was linked to.
Maybe Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla could get together, and configure their OSes and browsers to do DNS lookups by default using a system different than ICANN's via security updates.
That would make ICANN mostly irrelevant in less than a year.
Also, it improves security, since you are already trusting your browser vendor and would no longer need to trust ICANN, registrars and the CA system as well.
Microsoft, Google and Apple were among the first to apply for the new TLDs (though the latter just asked for .apple), so why would they now oppose this scheme?
I'm not sure that such a thing means they support the change, it's just the rational thing to do given the change happening.
As for why they would setup an alternate DNS system, they would get power over the DNS system and the money from domain registrations.
In exchange, users would get more security and website owners lower prices and more friendly policies (now the reputation of those companies is on the line, and they care more about it than ICANN since they are selling other things).
There's some anonymity risk though which might lead to strong opposition to the project if not addressed and while bundling and using Tor would work, it's not clear if Tor could take a few billion extra users doing tunneled DNS queries.
This would be an appallingly bad precedent to set.
As soon as there was precedent and infrastructure for this, a huge number of state actors would either set this up maliciously, or start auctioning off country-specific DNS rights (aka start extorting money from companies -- "oh do you want to own google.com in <country>? that will be $2mm/yr").
The new TLDs allow more expressiveness and creativity. IMO, there should be even more of them. The limitations should be similar to the limitations placed on searchable results: cost, law, preventing harm, etc.
It is interesting to think about why we are limiting the creativity here. Are we looking out for a human being's typical memory? A router's memory? Network capacity? All seem ample to support loads of new TLDs.
59 comments
[ 130 ms ] story [ 347 ms ] threadIt's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.
Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as far as what domain points a website? What is the benefit in having fewer TLDs?
User confusion for one.
The only use case where domain name is actually used is when you need to tell someone to go to some website or give them your e-mail over the phone. Especially if it's your website. New TLDs are still fresh and people get confused. If it doesn't end with .com, they want to add .com themselves. You need to spend time and energy explaining - which would take a lot longer than just having an extra word in proper .com domain.
I guess people will get used to new TLDs in time. But that time is yet to come.
I wouldn't worry about that too much. The general public concept of the Internet is really not all that old (15-20 years). People will adjust remarkably quickly.
what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error. Granted this is not how most users use firefox host tab. However it is clear case where corporate greed breaks organically grown infrastructure, in our office we use 8.8.8.8 and thats how I know about it.
Domains can't have spaces, so if you type as such, you'll still get a search in any browser (that has search-in-URL-bar enabled, of course).
What kind of realistic search query without spaces and ending in ".dog" do you see yourself doing?
http://filext.com/file-extension/DOG
They also have a self interest in handling conflicts responsibly and being proactive about new laws, and the juridical status of domain ownership, because they're in it for the long run. I wish I could say the same about for example Verisign...
Then owning all the 2nd level domains would be prohibitively expensive and would actually be useful for people coming up with a good domain name.
And we have .bank launching, you have to actually be a financial institution in order to have a .bank domain.
We will be able to trust those new TLDs, this is all changing back (to the way it should be).
There will be a time when the multitude of TLDs won't bother anyone. Limiting TLDs doesn't add security. Educating people about the dangers of the internet does.
What if you're a bank and somebody gets a TLD like "yourbank.bank" with valid SSL and starts fishing people from yourbank.com?
What happens now? It's not like there's a single domain already - there are dozens, if not hundreds of TLDs.
The realistic answer is: the new TLDs don't matter, even just with .com, it's easy to get a similar enough domain that many people will fall for.
Either that, or they'll finally realize it's futile and stop that nonsense.
The new TLDs are a massive problem disguised as a solution in search of a problem.
Who benefits?
I find it somewhat depressing that emailing folks about domain names they're not using results in either a) being ignored or b) being asked to pay $40,000.
I'm of the view if you're sitting on names that you're keeping around exclusively because you think they could net you a windfall in the future then you're a bit of an internet twat.
I think the new gTLDs are great. Most of them aren't exorbitantly expensive, and generally speaking they free you up to have an address on the big wild internet that makes way more sense than the contrived naming conventions we resorted to using in the past (eg: get[???].com, [???]app.com, both of which I can think of prime, famous examples in real world use). Is [???].app really better? Yeah, probably.
I think you're confused, and probably mean "give up the domains" they're not using. Not "give up the TLDs".
This is not a viable option, though. Even though someone may think they're not using the domain, there's a good chance they could be using it (like using it for email even though the a record doesn't resolve to anything) or they could be using it as an investment.
Asking someone to give up a domain that "they're not using" is like asking someone to give up the vacant lot they're not using. It's real estate.
Anyways, I'm actually arguably in favour or a Land Value Tax. Land is a super fininte resource and holding onto it for no reason other than as an investment screws over anybody who isn't there first. This is great if you have land, for whatever reason, but not to great if you grow up poor and want to live anywhere near your place of work in a place like London where the property market is completely broken.
The domains landscape is similar, except that it is indeed easier to create new TLDs than manage the mess of domain speculation.
There isn't a good alternative to the way it currently works. Allowing domain owners to sell their domains results in domains going to those companies that are successful enough to afford them.
Some domains that appear unused are actually being used.
I've got a very minimal, largely neglected, web presence on my domain, but would not even consider selling it unless the price was very very high.
That's because I am using it--for email. If I were to sell my domain I'd have to update my information with thousands of sites, companies, and individuals.
That's not something I'd be willing to undertake lightly. Any place that has my email that I forget to update is a place where my account could be easily hijacked.
A few other sports specific domains are also nice, like .soccer, .tennis, .football ...
Almost all of the meaningful .com's .org's and .net's are gone. It's time we had new TLD's that make more sense.
I think that a "globally unique brand" will go the same way as a "globally unique username", for exactly the same reasons.
Goodbye "apple" hello "apple computers"... oh wait, that already happened...
If we only allow companies to have ".com" then which of these two companies, both called Apple, would have "apple.com"?
Having multiple TLDs allows for disambiguation. It's a good thing.
That would make ICANN mostly irrelevant in less than a year.
Also, it improves security, since you are already trusting your browser vendor and would no longer need to trust ICANN, registrars and the CA system as well.
As for why they would setup an alternate DNS system, they would get power over the DNS system and the money from domain registrations.
In exchange, users would get more security and website owners lower prices and more friendly policies (now the reputation of those companies is on the line, and they care more about it than ICANN since they are selling other things).
There's some anonymity risk though which might lead to strong opposition to the project if not addressed and while bundling and using Tor would work, it's not clear if Tor could take a few billion extra users doing tunneled DNS queries.
As soon as there was precedent and infrastructure for this, a huge number of state actors would either set this up maliciously, or start auctioning off country-specific DNS rights (aka start extorting money from companies -- "oh do you want to own google.com in <country>? that will be $2mm/yr").
It is interesting to think about why we are limiting the creativity here. Are we looking out for a human being's typical memory? A router's memory? Network capacity? All seem ample to support loads of new TLDs.