8 ms·

The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

lolinder 5y ago
Needs (2011): http://web.archive.org/web/20110321001950/https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/vanity-tld.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110321001950/https://www.temple...
- gnabgib 5y ago
  It might even be older according to the main page ("mostly written in 2001")[0]. Sure would be helpful if the author included a publish date. Many blog entries (and stack overflow type solutions) need time context (it may have been the solution/a reasonable position at the time) https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/ https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/
  - Croftengea 5y ago
    You can tell the writing is very old because it mentions .ibm as an example of super well-known and wealthy corporation. No mention of Google nor Amazon.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    You're right, it could be much older. I thought 2011 seemed likely because that's the earliest the web archive has and that's the year that the new gTLD program really got rolling. However, it looks from some of his other content that he might have been referring to discussions that were started in 2000 and 2001: http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/ http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Given the reference "I wrote a satire of issues around this some years ago" for a piece posted in 2005, I suspect the 2010 / 2011 year is reasonably accurate. https://ideas.4brad.com/node/221 https://ideas.4brad.com/node/221 https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/sell-english.html https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/sell-english.html
digitaLandscape 5y ago
quicksilver03 5y ago
I would tolerate the ICANN TLD money-grabbing scheme, but the "new" TLDs are a little more than an indication of bad taste. I can't be the only one to dislike anything more than 3 characters in a TLD, like .cloud or .engineering.
- pm90 5y ago
  What’s the problem with longer length tlds?
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    In practice URLs often cannot be more than 2K characters. It's also more work to type and bytes to transmit and harder to see on small screens. For many use cases these are irreverent, but they do matter to some.
    - jefftk 5y ago
      Where is 2K a limit these days?
      - 7steps2much 5y ago
        Chromium based browsers! > The Google Chrome browser supports a maximum length of a web page URL of 2 MB (2048 characters) in size. taken from [0]. Do note that this is a restriction created by the browser developers. In theory a URL can be of arbitrary length. Some browsers (like Firefox) do comply with this, though they might now show the full URL to the user, cutting it off after a certain number of characters. [0]: https://mywebshosting.com/what-is-the-maximum-url-length-limit-in-browsers/#URL_Overview https://mywebshosting.com/what-is-the-maximum-url-length-lim...
        sokoloff 5y ago
        That would be 2KB (the error is in the reference material; you cited it faithfully).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
togaen 5y ago
I mean, all domains are really vanity domains. This just gives people more ways to be vain, which is all anyone really wants.
mixedbizness 5y ago
I bought a LOT of .biz domains, turns out carriers often block people from receiving SMS messages containing email addresses at these TLDs, without notifying me or them. Probably because they're often used for spam? (I bought em because they were cheap.)
- kijin 5y ago
  If they're cheap for you, they're cheap for spammers, too.
niedzielski 5y ago
There is already http://microsoft.bing http://microsoft.bing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom....
- kijin 5y ago
  Which redirects to bing.com, proving that they really have no use for the .bing TLD other than to prevent someone else from grabbing it.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    Imagine the clamour of people who want to be associated with Bing The real problem is can I still type weirdfilename.exe into the browser bar and get to a search engine?
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      The Crosby estate?
  - firekvz 5y ago
    .bing tld is theirs, is not available for the public and even if it was available to register, they can reserve words for their own usage before launching it and if you mean, someone else actually doing the paperwork to get the .bing tld for them, it wouldnt ever be approved.
Croftengea 5y ago
> It creates a three-tier world. The big boys who have TLDs, the cheaper boys who have .com The prophecy didn't come true. Granted the big boys got their .googles and .amazons, but good old .coms are still a thing and not considered "cheaper".
dqv 5y ago
Sorry, but *looks at my nails* .com is a boomer TLD, it's passé. Do you really want a domain from last century? Or do you want an exotic .asia? A cool .club? A forward looking .future? Or even joining the ranks of the celebrity media with a stylish... .xn--45q11c? The answer is clear, if you want to stay in the past, then go with .com, but the .future is in vanity TLDs. For more information, check out my website https://ok.boomer https://ok.boomer and considering buying a .boomer domain today!
- easrng 5y ago
  .xn--45q11c is actually .八卦 (According to Google translate, it means Gossip)
  - dqv 5y ago
    Yes, a perfect TLD for the new Perez Hilton ;)
mavhc 5y ago
Whoever invented selling 1 row in a database for massive amounts of money per year was a genius
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Modern Papal indulgences.
- meesterdude 5y ago
  it's better than that: they're RENTING database rows.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hirsin 5y ago
There's a legitimate engineering issue here too that bears mentioning. Your marketing team will charge ahead with migrating all your product.business.com sites to just product.business You'll get half a year into that migration before someone asks about shared domain cookies. Oh, login.business.com dropped an SSO cookie on business.com? After that you'll get the lovely request - you work with the browser people, can't we just edit the standard to drop a cookie on a TLD?
- mjevans 5y ago
  Discussion on stack overflow... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3342140/cross-domain-cookies https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3342140/cross-domain-coo... I would really like a better solution; but that appears to live solidly within a successor to current HTML pages, something designed from inception with security contexts in mind. Maybe they can fix login / logout / credential management too; I really hope they just use kerberos.
mrweasel 5y ago
The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that somehow more confusing. No, the issue with the new/generic/vanity TLDs is that they've lost all meaning. They lack context.
- s_dev 5y ago
  You could write www.joehardware.builders to make it clearer.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    I suggested that, but as I wrote, that's actually more confusing if you don't know that there's a .builders TLD (in fact there's also a .builder).
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Paint a QR code on the side of the van instead, I bet it would get more engagement even with a .com address.
  - andreareina 5y ago
    QR code requires you to scan it in that moment. A human-readable (and -recognizable) URL stands a chance at being remembered at a later date.
    - will4274 5y ago
      > QR code requires you to scan it in that moment Not really, anymore. Android permits you to take a picture of a QR code and use it's URI later by going to the saved picture and clicking "Lens" (which activates Google's ML to identify QR codes).
  - 5y ago
paulcole 5y ago
Who’s the joker who bought http://bad.coffee http://bad.coffee?
Traster 5y ago
I don't understand why people are interested in keeping the implementation details of the internet exposed. There was a reason we came up with TLDs and such, and you had to type in http vs ftp vs https etc. But there's no reason to be constrained by these detalis. If the computer can figure it out? good.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_(registry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_(registry)
mikotodomo 5y ago
OMG what if someone buys .thinkdifferent!!!
xstefen 5y ago
I am reminded that Alphabet's Google's Charleston Road Registry acquired .foo with the promise of sharing it with the community, only to pull a 180 post-grant and keep it to themselves. FeelsBadMan

Needs (2011): http://web.archive.org/web/20110321001950/https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/vanity-tld.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110321001950/https://www.temple...

gnabgib 5y ago
It might even be older according to the main page ("mostly written in 2001")[0]. Sure would be helpful if the author included a publish date. Many blog entries (and stack overflow type solutions) need time context (it may have been the solution/a reasonable position at the time) https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/ https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/
- Croftengea 5y ago
  You can tell the writing is very old because it mentions .ibm as an example of super well-known and wealthy corporation. No mention of Google nor Amazon.
- lolinder 5y ago
  You're right, it could be much older. I thought 2011 seemed likely because that's the earliest the web archive has and that's the year that the new gTLD program really got rolling. However, it looks from some of his other content that he might have been referring to discussions that were started in 2000 and 2001: http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/ http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Given the reference "I wrote a satire of issues around this some years ago" for a piece posted in 2005, I suspect the 2010 / 2011 year is reasonably accurate. https://ideas.4brad.com/node/221 https://ideas.4brad.com/node/221 https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/sell-english.html https://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/sell-english.html

digitaLandscape 5y ago

quicksilver03 5y ago

I would tolerate the ICANN TLD money-grabbing scheme, but the "new" TLDs are a little more than an indication of bad taste. I can't be the only one to dislike anything more than 3 characters in a TLD, like .cloud or .engineering.

pm90 5y ago
What’s the problem with longer length tlds?
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  In practice URLs often cannot be more than 2K characters. It's also more work to type and bytes to transmit and harder to see on small screens. For many use cases these are irreverent, but they do matter to some.
  - jefftk 5y ago
    Where is 2K a limit these days?
    - 7steps2much 5y ago
      Chromium based browsers! > The Google Chrome browser supports a maximum length of a web page URL of 2 MB (2048 characters) in size. taken from [0]. Do note that this is a restriction created by the browser developers. In theory a URL can be of arbitrary length. Some browsers (like Firefox) do comply with this, though they might now show the full URL to the user, cutting it off after a certain number of characters. [0]: https://mywebshosting.com/what-is-the-maximum-url-length-limit-in-browsers/#URL_Overview https://mywebshosting.com/what-is-the-maximum-url-length-lim...
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        That would be 2KB (the error is in the reference material; you cited it faithfully).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

togaen 5y ago

I mean, all domains are really vanity domains. This just gives people more ways to be vain, which is all anyone really wants.

mixedbizness 5y ago

I bought a LOT of .biz domains, turns out carriers often block people from receiving SMS messages containing email addresses at these TLDs, without notifying me or them. Probably because they're often used for spam? (I bought em because they were cheap.)

kijin 5y ago
If they're cheap for you, they're cheap for spammers, too.

niedzielski 5y ago

There is already http://microsoft.bing http://microsoft.bing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom....

kijin 5y ago
Which redirects to bing.com, proving that they really have no use for the .bing TLD other than to prevent someone else from grabbing it.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Imagine the clamour of people who want to be associated with Bing The real problem is can I still type weirdfilename.exe into the browser bar and get to a search engine?
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The Crosby estate?
- firekvz 5y ago
  .bing tld is theirs, is not available for the public and even if it was available to register, they can reserve words for their own usage before launching it and if you mean, someone else actually doing the paperwork to get the .bing tld for them, it wouldnt ever be approved.

Croftengea 5y ago

> It creates a three-tier world. The big boys who have TLDs, the cheaper boys who have .com The prophecy didn't come true. Granted the big boys got their .googles and .amazons, but good old .coms are still a thing and not considered "cheaper".

dqv 5y ago

Sorry, but *looks at my nails* .com is a boomer TLD, it's passé. Do you really want a domain from last century? Or do you want an exotic .asia? A cool .club? A forward looking .future? Or even joining the ranks of the celebrity media with a stylish... .xn--45q11c? The answer is clear, if you want to stay in the past, then go with .com, but the .future is in vanity TLDs. For more information, check out my website https://ok.boomer https://ok.boomer and considering buying a .boomer domain today!

easrng 5y ago
.xn--45q11c is actually .八卦 (According to Google translate, it means Gossip)
- dqv 5y ago
  Yes, a perfect TLD for the new Perez Hilton ;)

mavhc 5y ago

Whoever invented selling 1 row in a database for massive amounts of money per year was a genius

dredmorbius 5y ago
Modern Papal indulgences.
meesterdude 5y ago
it's better than that: they're RENTING database rows.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hirsin 5y ago

There's a legitimate engineering issue here too that bears mentioning. Your marketing team will charge ahead with migrating all your product.business.com sites to just product.business You'll get half a year into that migration before someone asks about shared domain cookies. Oh, login.business.com dropped an SSO cookie on business.com? After that you'll get the lovely request - you work with the browser people, can't we just edit the standard to drop a cookie on a TLD?

mjevans 5y ago
Discussion on stack overflow... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3342140/cross-domain-cookies https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3342140/cross-domain-coo... I would really like a better solution; but that appears to live solidly within a successor to current HTML pages, something designed from inception with security contexts in mind. Maybe they can fix login / logout / credential management too; I really hope they just use kerberos.

mrweasel 5y ago

The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that somehow more confusing. No, the issue with the new/generic/vanity TLDs is that they've lost all meaning. They lack context.

s_dev 5y ago
You could write www.joehardware.builders to make it clearer.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I suggested that, but as I wrote, that's actually more confusing if you don't know that there's a .builders TLD (in fact there's also a .builder).
qbasic_forever 5y ago
Paint a QR code on the side of the van instead, I bet it would get more engagement even with a .com address.
- andreareina 5y ago
  QR code requires you to scan it in that moment. A human-readable (and -recognizable) URL stands a chance at being remembered at a later date.
  - will4274 5y ago
    > QR code requires you to scan it in that moment Not really, anymore. Android permits you to take a picture of a QR code and use it's URI later by going to the saved picture and clicking "Lens" (which activates Google's ML to identify QR codes).
- 5y ago

paulcole 5y ago

Who’s the joker who bought http://bad.coffee http://bad.coffee?

Traster 5y ago

I don't understand why people are interested in keeping the implementation details of the internet exposed. There was a reason we came up with TLDs and such, and you had to type in http vs ftp vs https etc. But there's no reason to be constrained by these detalis. If the computer can figure it out? good.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_(registry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_(registry)

mikotodomo 5y ago

OMG what if someone buys .thinkdifferent!!!

xstefen 5y ago

I am reminded that Alphabet's Google's Charleston Road Registry acquired .foo with the promise of sharing it with the community, only to pull a 180 post-grant and keep it to themselves. FeelsBadMan