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You can see a list of current gTLDs here: https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt Some of the ent

You can see a list of current gTLDs here: https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt Some of the entries in there are... interesting. Who the hell thought ".travelersinsurance" is a good buy?

bahmboo 2y ago
Travelers Insurance is a huge company 98th on Fortune 500 list
- hypeatei 2y ago
  Yeah but it's an awful domain name lol
- toast0 2y ago
  Sure, but did they need a tld? What are they going to use it for that travelers.com isn't a better choice? How much money did they light on fire to have a tld and what utility does it provide?
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Not only that, .insurance is a TLD, so why didn't they just get travelers.insurance?
    - lmz 2y ago
      More control?
  - johannes1234321 2y ago
    They don't need it. But they don't want anybody else to have it either. With such a generic and descriptive name trade mark protection isn't easy.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      And if GTLDs had become the AOL keyword of the 2010s they would have really been pissed if they missed out. I could see a world where GTLDs were given extreme preference by search engines and browsers, but that world isn't ours.
      - johannes1234321 2y ago
        Well, ICANN explicitly forbid using just the TLD, so https://google/ https://google/ was forbidden and you need at least https://blog.google/ https://blog.google/
- lolinder 2y ago
  That doesn't explain why Travelers Insurance thought that they needed their own gTLD. Size as measured in dollars isn't really relevant—Berkshire Hathaway is #5 and doesn't have one—what matters is size as measured in registered domain names (for internal or external use). Basically no one outside of big tech has the volume of domain names to justify paying for their own gTLD, Fortune 500 or not.
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    Berkshire Hathaway is not a consumer brand; Travelers Insurance is. And some consumer brands are willing to spend very large amounts of money to forestall brand confusion, squatting, impersonation, etc. They probably bought their TLDs for the same reason they own travlers.com and many other variations: so no one else can use it either.
- griftrejection 2y ago
  And that's why they're bad using gTLDs anyone would actually ever want to use. "Hey, fellow youths, check out our snazzy new website: statefarm.travelersinsurance! So easy to type on your IBM keyboard, amirite?"
Animats 2y ago
How many of those are even routed to anywhere? Browsers don't like to route directly to TLDs. In theory, Amazon could have a web site at amazon but browsers interpret that as a search request, not a request for a rooted domain name. Even amazon. which means to treat that as a fully qualified domain name doesn't work in browsers any more. (That's what the trailing "." means. Relative domain names were a thing. If you're on a machine within "bigu.edu", and you want "ourteam.bigu.edu", you can supposedly just use "ourteam" as a domain. This rarely works right, because few clients have domain names any more. Is it even still implemented in most DNS lookup clients?)
- zb3 2y ago
  Doesn't Google use "go" internally? Is it special cased like localhost?
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    Unofficial TLDs work fine without being special cased (well, so long as the browser is being pointed at the appropriate DNS server which knows about these entries), it's when the TLD itself is used as a URL you have to enter "http://tld http://tld." instead of just typing "tld." but any sub like "example.tld." still works automatically.
  - marksomnian 2y ago
    I believe http://go http://go isn’t special cased, but instead (ab)uses DNS search domains - the server is actually something like go.corp.google.com, and all Google PCs are configured to use corp.google.com as a search domain
    - Animats 2y ago
      That's normal DNS behavior. If your machine is foo15241.corp.google.com, and you ask DNS for "go", you are supposed to get "go.corp.google.com".
- zamadatix 2y ago
  FWIW "http://amazon http://amazon." still does what you want it to in Chrome and Firefox.
bastawhiz 2y ago
If you're the CTO of Travelers Insurance, I bet you think it's a real banger of a TLD
observationist 2y ago
https://www.101domain.com/travelersinsurance.htm https://www.101domain.com/travelersinsurance.htm They got .travelers and .travelersinsurance , maybe some others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travelers_Companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travelers_Companies - with a 32 billion dollar yearly revenue, they can afford a lot of boondoggle nonsense projects. They probably assigned a bunch of people with insufficient technical knowledge and a vague project scope the objective of updating their cloud and web presence.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Revenue isn’t profit. It’s entirely possible to lose money on $32 billion in revenue. Your link says Travelers Companies had ~$3 billion of net income (profit) on ~$42 billion in revenue. That’s still not enough information to say what they can “afford” because opportunity cost exists.
  - observationist 2y ago
    You only get silly TLD projects if the overall revenue of your company exceeds some threshold; other companies can't afford that level of mistake. Profits and loss don't matter as much as how much money is coming and going - look at ISPs, with the massive amounts of money shuffling that goes on between the top 5 at a global scale. Quantity is a quality all its own, in these cases; it might only be a fraction of a percent of a budget over the course of a decade, but the real world gets to see tens or hundreds of millions of dollars essentially wasted. Project managers and MBAs get to rationalize their degrees and theories, because after all, they wouldn't be getting paid by ABCXYZ, Inc and managing million dollar budgets if their project wasn't top-class and 100% justified. You might have to keep firing new hires that mention anything about the whole TLD thing being ridiculous, but they were just negative energy anti-social people who wouldn't have fit the company culture anyway.

bahmboo 2y ago

Travelers Insurance is a huge company 98th on Fortune 500 list

hypeatei 2y ago
Yeah but it's an awful domain name lol
toast0 2y ago
Sure, but did they need a tld? What are they going to use it for that travelers.com isn't a better choice? How much money did they light on fire to have a tld and what utility does it provide?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Not only that, .insurance is a TLD, so why didn't they just get travelers.insurance?
  - lmz 2y ago
    More control?
- johannes1234321 2y ago
  They don't need it. But they don't want anybody else to have it either. With such a generic and descriptive name trade mark protection isn't easy.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    And if GTLDs had become the AOL keyword of the 2010s they would have really been pissed if they missed out. I could see a world where GTLDs were given extreme preference by search engines and browsers, but that world isn't ours.
    - johannes1234321 2y ago
      Well, ICANN explicitly forbid using just the TLD, so https://google/ https://google/ was forbidden and you need at least https://blog.google/ https://blog.google/
lolinder 2y ago
That doesn't explain why Travelers Insurance thought that they needed their own gTLD. Size as measured in dollars isn't really relevant—Berkshire Hathaway is #5 and doesn't have one—what matters is size as measured in registered domain names (for internal or external use). Basically no one outside of big tech has the volume of domain names to justify paying for their own gTLD, Fortune 500 or not.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  Berkshire Hathaway is not a consumer brand; Travelers Insurance is. And some consumer brands are willing to spend very large amounts of money to forestall brand confusion, squatting, impersonation, etc. They probably bought their TLDs for the same reason they own travlers.com and many other variations: so no one else can use it either.
griftrejection 2y ago
And that's why they're bad using gTLDs anyone would actually ever want to use. "Hey, fellow youths, check out our snazzy new website: statefarm.travelersinsurance! So easy to type on your IBM keyboard, amirite?"

Animats 2y ago

How many of those are even routed to anywhere? Browsers don't like to route directly to TLDs. In theory, Amazon could have a web site at amazon but browsers interpret that as a search request, not a request for a rooted domain name. Even amazon. which means to treat that as a fully qualified domain name doesn't work in browsers any more. (That's what the trailing "." means. Relative domain names were a thing. If you're on a machine within "bigu.edu", and you want "ourteam.bigu.edu", you can supposedly just use "ourteam" as a domain. This rarely works right, because few clients have domain names any more. Is it even still implemented in most DNS lookup clients?)

zb3 2y ago
Doesn't Google use "go" internally? Is it special cased like localhost?
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Unofficial TLDs work fine without being special cased (well, so long as the browser is being pointed at the appropriate DNS server which knows about these entries), it's when the TLD itself is used as a URL you have to enter "http://tld http://tld." instead of just typing "tld." but any sub like "example.tld." still works automatically.
- marksomnian 2y ago
  I believe http://go http://go isn’t special cased, but instead (ab)uses DNS search domains - the server is actually something like go.corp.google.com, and all Google PCs are configured to use corp.google.com as a search domain
  - Animats 2y ago
    That's normal DNS behavior. If your machine is foo15241.corp.google.com, and you ask DNS for "go", you are supposed to get "go.corp.google.com".
zamadatix 2y ago
FWIW "http://amazon http://amazon." still does what you want it to in Chrome and Firefox.

bastawhiz 2y ago

If you're the CTO of Travelers Insurance, I bet you think it's a real banger of a TLD

observationist 2y ago

https://www.101domain.com/travelersinsurance.htm https://www.101domain.com/travelersinsurance.htm They got .travelers and .travelersinsurance , maybe some others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travelers_Companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travelers_Companies - with a 32 billion dollar yearly revenue, they can afford a lot of boondoggle nonsense projects. They probably assigned a bunch of people with insufficient technical knowledge and a vague project scope the objective of updating their cloud and web presence.

mulmen 2y ago
Revenue isn’t profit. It’s entirely possible to lose money on $32 billion in revenue. Your link says Travelers Companies had ~$3 billion of net income (profit) on ~$42 billion in revenue. That’s still not enough information to say what they can “afford” because opportunity cost exists.
- observationist 2y ago
  You only get silly TLD projects if the overall revenue of your company exceeds some threshold; other companies can't afford that level of mistake. Profits and loss don't matter as much as how much money is coming and going - look at ISPs, with the massive amounts of money shuffling that goes on between the top 5 at a global scale. Quantity is a quality all its own, in these cases; it might only be a fraction of a percent of a budget over the course of a decade, but the real world gets to see tens or hundreds of millions of dollars essentially wasted. Project managers and MBAs get to rationalize their degrees and theories, because after all, they wouldn't be getting paid by ABCXYZ, Inc and managing million dollar budgets if their project wasn't top-class and 100% justified. You might have to keep firing new hires that mention anything about the whole TLD thing being ridiculous, but they were just negative energy anti-social people who wouldn't have fit the company culture anyway.