3 ms·

How relevant is a TLD anymore? There are so many options. Most people seem to use Google, and then after visiting the site, they use whatever the autocomplete

How relevant is a TLD anymore? There are so many options. Most people seem to use Google, and then after visiting the site, they use whatever the autocomplete in their address bar is. Or, they use an app. At least in India, I've seen most people doing this on their smartphones. Nobody likes to type in the address bar anymore.

tobltobs 7y ago
What comes up in Google are websites, those websites are from a domain, those domains have a TLD.
icebraining 7y ago
Even if the TLD is irrelevant for new domains, losing your existing domain (with all its back links, Google score, email reputation, etc) can be hard, so existing .org domain holders may be in for a nasty choice.
unreal37 7y ago
Yes, this. I don't get how anyone actually cares about a top level domain. There are so many. Pick another.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  I don't get how anyone actually cares about a top level domain Do you even email, bro?
VLM 7y ago
According to the general public the only TLD is .com My kids school can't use a .edu domain because everyone insists on typing in variations on whatever.edu.com and its just too much of a headache. My home town can't use a .gov domain because everyone insists on typing in variations on cityname.gov.com and its just too much of a headache. Even more hilariously my city name is my county name so there's a turf battle over name.gov. At least my hometown city name is rare, there are supposedly 88 cities named "Springfield" in the USA. They heavily market a .com domain for my city although it redirects to a ridiculous variation of city-name.gov. I honestly don't know the marketing domain for my county, but its probably a .com also. I can think of insider sites on .org for IT and technical people; debian.org for example. The death of .org would hit IT and tech people kinda hard. I can't think of a popular general public site on the .org TLD, and even if there is one, well, it can just move to .com where the end users already assume it is anyway. In short, if .org is squeezed, a couple insiders and IT people will angrily leave to .com, and the general public will not notice, other than its a little easier to find them, because "all domains end in dot com" as I've been told many times over the years. Insider sites will go to specialty TLDs that the general public do not realize exists and are thus quite cheap, .mobi or .name or .biz or similar. Presumably the private equity firm figured this out during due diligence. By analogy, they MUST know they did not buy the one monopoly cable modem provider for a region which they could squeeze for all its worth ... they knowingly bought the equivalent of one food truck in a highly competitive market. If they destroy .org for fun or whatever, well, its not really a big deal to switch, so knowing they won't make much money off the destruction, why bother destroying .org? By analogy you can make a lot of money by destroying Iraq, so there was intense corporate media pressure to destroy Iraq, and Iraq was destroyed. However, you can't make a lot of money destroying Clipperton Island, and as such there is not much big corporate media pressure to invade or bomb Clipperton, and its unlikely it'll ever be destroyed (at least, not for profit, LOL).
- mod50ack 7y ago
  So far from the case. Your kids' school can't use a .edu domain because this is reserved for use by higher education bodies. If your kids were university students, they'd be using .edu, I guarantee it. Every reputable institution in the US uses .edu. (Outside the US, universities all follow various national systems.) Local government is a terrible example because these are approximately the worst organizations ever when it comes to domain choice and the like (government and all). In any case, people are typing whatever.com, not whatever.edu.com or whatever.gov.com, if they are indeed typing whatever.com. Have you ever heard of wikipedia.org? That's a pretty popular site on a .org domain. And no, not everybody assumes it's a .com. If .org were squeezed, thousands upon thousands of us would have to painfully change our email addresses, our organizations' domains, etc., making things both significantly harder to find and interrupting years of continuity in most cases.
  - jaclaz 7y ago
    >Have you ever heard of wikipedia.org? That's a pretty popular site on a .org domain. And no, not everybody assumes it's a .com. Sorry to say so, but that is not a particularly valid point, since https://www.wikipedia.com/ https://www.wikipedia.com/ redirects to https://www.wikipedia.org/ https://www.wikipedia.org/ and actually both are registered to Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      But then when there’s a price hike on .org and Wikipedia has to give up their domain? There will be millions of broken links.
      - jaclaz 7y ago
        Sure, but what I mean is that for all we know all the people that VLM 16 knows may well today be accessing daily Wikipedia.org by typing Wikipedia.com as an address without noticing, so, as said not a particularly good point by mod50ack.

tobltobs 7y ago

What comes up in Google are websites, those websites are from a domain, those domains have a TLD.

icebraining 7y ago

Even if the TLD is irrelevant for new domains, losing your existing domain (with all its back links, Google score, email reputation, etc) can be hard, so existing .org domain holders may be in for a nasty choice.

unreal37 7y ago

Yes, this. I don't get how anyone actually cares about a top level domain. There are so many. Pick another.

goatinaboat 7y ago
I don't get how anyone actually cares about a top level domain Do you even email, bro?

VLM 7y ago

According to the general public the only TLD is .com My kids school can't use a .edu domain because everyone insists on typing in variations on whatever.edu.com and its just too much of a headache. My home town can't use a .gov domain because everyone insists on typing in variations on cityname.gov.com and its just too much of a headache. Even more hilariously my city name is my county name so there's a turf battle over name.gov. At least my hometown city name is rare, there are supposedly 88 cities named "Springfield" in the USA. They heavily market a .com domain for my city although it redirects to a ridiculous variation of city-name.gov. I honestly don't know the marketing domain for my county, but its probably a .com also. I can think of insider sites on .org for IT and technical people; debian.org for example. The death of .org would hit IT and tech people kinda hard. I can't think of a popular general public site on the .org TLD, and even if there is one, well, it can just move to .com where the end users already assume it is anyway. In short, if .org is squeezed, a couple insiders and IT people will angrily leave to .com, and the general public will not notice, other than its a little easier to find them, because "all domains end in dot com" as I've been told many times over the years. Insider sites will go to specialty TLDs that the general public do not realize exists and are thus quite cheap, .mobi or .name or .biz or similar. Presumably the private equity firm figured this out during due diligence. By analogy, they MUST know they did not buy the one monopoly cable modem provider for a region which they could squeeze for all its worth ... they knowingly bought the equivalent of one food truck in a highly competitive market. If they destroy .org for fun or whatever, well, its not really a big deal to switch, so knowing they won't make much money off the destruction, why bother destroying .org? By analogy you can make a lot of money by destroying Iraq, so there was intense corporate media pressure to destroy Iraq, and Iraq was destroyed. However, you can't make a lot of money destroying Clipperton Island, and as such there is not much big corporate media pressure to invade or bomb Clipperton, and its unlikely it'll ever be destroyed (at least, not for profit, LOL).

mod50ack 7y ago
So far from the case. Your kids' school can't use a .edu domain because this is reserved for use by higher education bodies. If your kids were university students, they'd be using .edu, I guarantee it. Every reputable institution in the US uses .edu. (Outside the US, universities all follow various national systems.) Local government is a terrible example because these are approximately the worst organizations ever when it comes to domain choice and the like (government and all). In any case, people are typing whatever.com, not whatever.edu.com or whatever.gov.com, if they are indeed typing whatever.com. Have you ever heard of wikipedia.org? That's a pretty popular site on a .org domain. And no, not everybody assumes it's a .com. If .org were squeezed, thousands upon thousands of us would have to painfully change our email addresses, our organizations' domains, etc., making things both significantly harder to find and interrupting years of continuity in most cases.
- jaclaz 7y ago
  >Have you ever heard of wikipedia.org? That's a pretty popular site on a .org domain. And no, not everybody assumes it's a .com. Sorry to say so, but that is not a particularly valid point, since https://www.wikipedia.com/ https://www.wikipedia.com/ redirects to https://www.wikipedia.org/ https://www.wikipedia.org/ and actually both are registered to Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    But then when there’s a price hike on .org and Wikipedia has to give up their domain? There will be millions of broken links.
    - jaclaz 7y ago
      Sure, but what I mean is that for all we know all the people that VLM 16 knows may well today be accessing daily Wikipedia.org by typing Wikipedia.com as an address without noticing, so, as said not a particularly good point by mod50ack.