15 ms·

Tech press misses Google/Amazon name grab

268 points by davewiner 14y ago

jlarocco 14y ago
The concept of top level domains seems a bit outdated. I can only guess that under the new system "store.apple.com" will become "store.apple", "myname.blogger.com" will become "myname.blog", etc. So why not go the other way and just drop TLDs altogether? I know there are a few cases where a ".net" domain would clash with a ".com", but the people in those cases are already used to the conflict, so let them work it out which one keeps the TLD in their name and which one becomes TLD-less. The way it's going seems like a money grab by ICANN.
- forgotusername 14y ago
  Namespaces exist for a reason. For example, what do you call your network printer after http://canon http://canon gets reserved by the printer manufacturer? Same with http://epson http://epson, whatever. And is http://printer1/ http://printer1/ safe? Only until someone writes a paragraph justification and shows up with $1m. The entire process is a money grabbing farce.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local
    - Chlorus 14y ago
      .local causes chaos if you're running Bonjour/Avahi on the same network
      - icebraining 14y ago
        You just need to configure them as static mappings in /etc/avahi/hosts. http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts
    - forgotusername 14y ago
      Why should I have to type "canon.local" for my printer name, just in order to avoid an advert to buy a new printer? This destroys any sense of user preference in favor of large corporations pushing their shit further into your face even when you explicitly don't want it. I've worked at many places where http://search/ http://search/ was the Intranet search facility. Not now though, nope. Now your IT department will be under pressure to accept Big Search's latest site-integrated intranet search which they conveniently started marketing around the time they broke all your local URLs.
      - nikcub 14y ago
        The good thing about DNS is that the user controls it. You can set it to whatever you want. Enough people set it one way and it becomes a standard that no board can decide against.
        because 14y ago
        Exactly. What's needed is more public education. DNS is a basic thing all users should know about. You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. They might not be able to explain how it works or what it stands for, but they know what it is and they know they need it for applications to run smoothly. Same should be true of DNS. Mozilla, not to mention Adobe, can coordinate millions of people to all download the same program (Firefox, Flash plugin). People can be taught how to control their own DNS, e.g. how to choose a DNS server. But ICANN likes users to remain ignorant. They want everyone to use their root server without ever thinking about it. Well, that server is about to become overrun with needless tld's.
        icebraining 14y ago
        You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. People in NY were asked what their browser was and the most common reply was "Google" - and this was before Chrome had any kind of share. People are completely ignorant when it comes to technology.
  - ejdyksen 14y ago
    Does owning a gTLD entitle you to use the top of your namespace for anything other than NS/SOA records? Put another way, if I'm Microsoft, can I put my website at http://microsoft http://microsoft? Or do I have to use http://www.microsoft http://www.microsoft? I've looked to see if there is a policy from ICANN on this, but I can't find one. Historically, TLDs did not themselves point to hosts (or have other things like MX or TXT records).
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Some ccTLDs do have A records, though, like http://ac http://ac
      - franze 14y ago
        great example!!! i just tried to submit http://ac/ to hackernews. guess what? it didn't work.
        Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
        Yeah, it's common to have bad url or email address validation. Many sites do not accept short email addresses at all. As example a @bc.de (space is there intentionally). When it becomes a @ bc then it's interesting to see how many sites will fail with that.
        because 14y ago
        What browser are you using? This worked in my browser.
        Cyranix 14y ago
        I believe that TLDs with A records should resolve correctly if you add a period to the end, as in "http://ac. http://ac.. As I recall, this came up when the "http://to. http://to. link shortener [no longer available] was discussed a while ago.
      - ajasmin 14y ago
        With the current trend of combining the address and search bar I doubt browsers will let you go to e.g. http://lol http://lol when you type "lol" in the bar. In fact I just checked that typing "ac" in the Chrome omnibox makes a Google search for "ac" as I would expect. So the value of having an A record on a TLD is limited. Edit: Somehow I missed the bar on top of the search results that says "Did you mean to go to http://ac http://ac " so there's some value after all.
- Andrenid 14y ago
  I've been preaching for years that we need to get rid of TLDs. If we truly want the web to be a global/borderless place, get rid of the extensions and let us do http://companyname/ http://companyname/ (I know it currently can't work like that, but I'm sure all the great minds out there can figure it out). Ideally I would've liked to see it evolve into a more clean/friendly structure all together... web//companyname, yourname@companyname, etc. Yes we'd get the clashes of people that currently have different TLDs of the same name, but maybe solve that by making the new structure an optional extra, so people buy the "new" domains from scratch (and if you currently own all major TLDs for your name, eg Microsoft/Google/Apple/etc, noone else can register your "new" domain). First to buy the new one, gets it. Person who had the differing TLD finds a slightly different one. These new .whatever really piss me off. It's making the web a messier place, and confusing the average users even more, all for the sake for some greedy fatcats to charge stupid amounts to companies that can afford to throw money at it.
  - henrikschroder 14y ago
    And what do you do when multiple companies have the same name and there's no top-level country domain to distinguish between them?
    - icebraining 14y ago
      The same you do know when two companies in the same country have the same name/trademark?
    - rootzoned 14y ago
      If you are ICANN/Registry/Registrar you make money! You send it to auction and let them bid to see who gets it. Or you send things to a dispute resolution provider, e.g., WIPO. Not sure how much revenue they make from these disputes, but it is no doubt growing. Could this problem be fixed with a technical solution? Maybe. But for ICANN, there's little incentive to fix it because lots of money is made in their system if there are disputes and an illusion of scarcity. What is true for company names is also true for trademarks. Like company names, trademarks are both restricted to a particular business sector and they are regional. But ICANN's system keeps things so that there can be only one xyz.com even though there may be many XYZ Corporations around the world, in different business sectors. They do not compete with each other in the real world. But in ICANN's world, they are forced to compete. And this brings in lots of money for ICANN/Registries/Registrars.
- kijeda 14y ago
  One of the common refrains from this is that it is a money grab by ICANN, but all ICANN is doing is implementing a multi-stakeholder consensus policy that was ratified by the various community groups 5 years ago, and doing so on a cost-recovery basis. While the costs may end up being conservatively estimated, any excess will be returned back to the community. ICANN itself has no vested interest in this other than executing its policies, and if the consensus policy had ended up being "no new gTLDs, there are enough" then it wouldn't have embarked on this program.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Pretty much all the "stakeholders" are from the "domain industry", so it's pretty obvious what their "consensus" would be. You're right that it's technically not a money grab by ICANN, but somebody is planning to make money and we've seen that people who work at ICANN can also profit from the revolving door.
unreal37 14y ago
OMG I tweeted this before 8am and it's 6pm now and there's no news stories about it. What's the difference between Google keeping .blog for itself, and some other company charging $50,000 for their normal registration fee? (Some already do that.) Not much.
divtxt 14y ago
"Tech press ignores expected next phase of ICANN's gTLD sales." would be a more accurate title. Like a public good, the dilution costs of issuing gTLDs is externalized and paid by everyone (other than ICANN). ICANN has an exclusive license on this valuable virtual real estate, little accountability and a well demonstrated intention of making all the money they can. Don't blame smart buyers who get in early - they're not the ones who created the situation.
citricsquid 14y ago
The full list of applications is here: http://gtldresult.icann.org/ http://gtldresult.icann.org/
- seaco 14y ago
  You can can find Google's applications by looking under "Charleston Road Registry Inc.". Amazon is under their own name. Between the two of them, they have some pretty generic applications. i.e. ".lol", ".mom", ".pet" & ".soy"(?) etc... It looks like Google only applied for 3 non-english TLDs. Amazon has closer to a dozen. Might say something about long term plans. Microsoft has about a dozen applications, mostly for things they have trademarked. ".xbox" etc. Apple is in there as well, but only for ".apple". ".app", ".tunes" were both applied for by Amazon.
  - jwdavidson 14y ago
    "soy" is Spanish for "I am"
- decadentcactus 14y ago
  I searched for .rugby. One is the IRB (the main governing body of rugby basically, which is understandable). But also one from "dot Rugby Limited" which if you look closer, is a likely brand new LLC purely created to bid on domains. They also applied for .soccer, and the emails are all "icanntas<number>@famousfourmedia.com", the number I assume corresponding to the number of applications. Rugby is at 23. Their site basically says "we're going to buy tlds to make money off".
ryanwaggoner 14y ago
Meh...if this is how it ends up working, doesn't this mean that gtld's will basically end up being equivalent to subdomains, but on the other end of the URL? Does it matter if some crappy blog is at unicorns.blog instead of unicorns.blogspot.com? I just see this landgrab as guaranteeing that those gLTD's won't end up being that valuable or prestigious in the long run...
- cowboyhero 14y ago
  It's more likely that some of these are defensive applications, to lock competitors from getting them (eg: blog, tunes). Winer is right, and I'm surprised nobody is writing about this or calling much attention to it. There's enormous potential marketing value behind domains like "beatles.music" or "harrypotter.books" or "superman.movies". With the advertising and reach of companies like Amazon and Google (or even Warner and Sony), I think these new domains have the power to split the web, and potentially turn .com, .net, and .org into something of a ghetto (sorta similar to how .biz and .name might be viewed by Joe Consumer now). On the other hand, it may well be meaningless. I'm continually surprised to see big companies use facebook.com/[companyname] in their advertising too.
  - smattiso 14y ago
    Does google prefer certain domains over others? Ie .com over .info as a rule? If so I wonder how this plays into that.
    - ceol 14y ago
      Consider when searching "nissan" in Google, http://www.nissan.com/ http://www.nissan.com/ is the fourth result despite being essentially a parked page that no one would ever really want when making that search. I would say TLDs are very influential.
      - TillE 14y ago
        It's easy enough to demonstrate that Google gives significant weight to domain names that match the search query. It's not entirely clear how that might be influenced by the TLD, though, whether they'd explicitly favor nissan.com over nissan.biz for example.
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
I find it most curious that a whopping 13 companies applied for the .app gTLD, including Amazon and Google, but not the company that started the original App Store and which sells the most apps. That company showed tremendous restraint by only applying for the .apple gTLD.
- ktizo 14y ago
  the company that started the original App Store I'm sure Sage Networks haven't registered .apple http://trademarkem.com/sage-networks-appstore-trademark-application http://trademarkem.com/sage-networks-appstore-trademark-appl...
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    Both Sage and Salesforce applied for the 'Appstore' trademark, not 'App Store' as Apple uses it. Also, they describe add-ons that one can buy/rent for their web platform -- that's not what I think of as an 'app'. In any case, I've found no proof that Sage actually used the name, and Salesforce's add-ons shop is named AppExchange. Let's go further back in time. Software programs on NeXTSTEP have had the extension .app since the first release in 1988. There are plenty of videos around from that time in which Steve Jobs refers to software programs as 'apps'. At the time, it wasn't a common word at all with Mac and PC users. Only after Steve Jobs came back to Apple, it entered Apple vocabulary because he would refer to software programs in that way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_bundle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_bundle
    - ktizo 14y ago
      'Apps' always makes me think of my old archimedes as that is where I first saw the phrase widely used. http://toastytech.com/guis/riscosoldlook.gif http://toastytech.com/guis/riscosoldlook.gif Also, Sage didn't use the name as their attempt to revive their trademark application, which in their filing they describe as "International Class 035: Operating on-line marketplaces for buying, selling and exchanging computer software and on-demand applications", was denied. In 2006. [edit] I could buy apps for the archimedes in a store. An app store is somewhere to buy apps. Technically speaking the apple app store is a package manager with ecommerce functionality. Very much like the linux predecessor CNR, in other words. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_%28software%29 [edit] Wikipedia, that fount of shaky, but vaguely accurate hearsay says that RISCOS was released in 1987. Archimedes computers were widely used in the UK due to being in pretty much all state high schools. Steve was not responsible for bringing the word into the public domain, no matter how much you wish it so.
Harkins 14y ago
Well of course it did, they didn't send out press releases.
seanconaty 14y ago
If you want to give feedback about the program, please do so here: https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/programfeedback/ https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/programfeedb... Personally I think the new gTLDs are an incredible abuse of power. They were cooked up only so ICANN could cash in on being the authority. Having new gTLDs are going to cause a lot of problems and they are prohibitively expensive.
- larrys 14y ago
  "Having new gTLDs are going to cause a lot of problems" What problems do you see this creating?
  - ktizo 14y ago
    <tinfoil-hat gasMark=3>Preferential network treatment for corporate TLD's that are willing to pay would be the obvious starting point for telecoms providers. If they are popular enough you can then place heavy restrictions on standard domains and try and sell the result as a 'safe' internet.</tinfoil-hat> Not that I think that this would work very well in the long run.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      They could/can already treat those companies domains preferentially. Nothing substantial changes in that regard.
  - NeutronBoy 14y ago
    You have a dev box on your network called 'test1'. You can host a dev environment there and navigate to it at http://test1 http://test1 . Works great, until somebody registers 'test1' as a gTLD. Then you get namespace conflicts.
    - jleader 14y ago
      Maybe we (or our software) needs to start requiring the period on the end of fully-qualified domain names? That way "test1" is a local name (relative to the default search path), and "test1." is a TLD. In theory, that's already the way it works, except that most software treats the trailing period as optional.
timmaxw 14y ago
What's the point in having so many top-level domains? I can see the value in having country codes, because otherwise there would be an international (probably US-dominated) authority that imposed its power on the Internet, but why any beyond that?
- cgusto 14y ago
  Agreed. This will just add unnecessary confusion for a lot of people. Might look good for marketing, but I bet most of these will just redirect to the '.com' site.
- fletchowns 14y ago
  More $$ for ICANN
newobj 14y ago
I wonder if people are overvaluing these gtlds. Of the general public, how many people are going to see "great.books" and think "Oh that's a URL I should type."
- incongruity 14y ago
  Exactly. And, more to the point, if they're kept private, they become less novel as people very quickly learn to equate them with Amazon or Google, etc. The gtld idea only produces significant value when the tld's are used for public registration and diverse use. At least that's my claim/prediction. Otherwise it becomes just a sideshow. Heck, even with open registration it might. Look at .tv or .mobi or .me or any other "valuable" tlds that current exist. They really don't seem to be as disruptive as some may have expected.
- kschults 14y ago
  This is the best example I've seen. We've spent the last 20+ years training the public that ".com", ".net", etc equals "website". Now that anything could be a URL, it's going to be a lot more confusing for people.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Which was the reason why bit.ly and del.icio.us never took off.
    - jeffgreco 14y ago
      Sure didn't with the general public, especially the latter.
  - jamesbritt 14y ago
    The owners of (books|music|whatever).com are going to be happy because a good number of people are going to see "best.books" and end up thinking that means "best.books.com"
- roc 14y ago
  Absolutely. In a world where .xxx bombs, I don't think there's much to worry about, as a practical matter. That said, it still reflects horribly on ICANN. Particularly with a former director flipping over to shameless gTLD profiteer. And it still reflects poorly on the tech press for not having at least pointed any of this out.
larrys 14y ago
"Did you think this is how it would work? I sure didn't." Was there something you read that indicated that what they did wasn't allowed? "Another angle on this, the ICANN people must have known about these applications long before they were made public. How could they continue this process, knowing that is how Google and Amazon interpreted the idea of new TLDs?" Everything including the entire process and requirements were public and anyone could have read and determined the specifics prior to any submissions (and voiced objections). From my reading there was nothing to prevent this anymore than if you filed for .winer you could determine only your family could use it. (Same as you get to decide who uses scripting.com, right?) At this point anyone can file objections to granting a particular TLD (the fact that you are the only applicant doesn't guarantee getting granted the TLD). So I would suggest to the OP (Dave Winer) that he writes an objection if this bothers him which will also serve to alert the tech press.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Was there something you read that indicated that what they did wasn't allowed? No kidding, private entities bid on, to buy, new gTLDs. Did the author assume that they would pay for them and then have to offer them up as a public good?
  - ferringham 14y ago
    So when the public regulates the Internet via their elected officials it is bad (a.k.a "socialism"). But when private corporations regulate to merely secure their monopolistic position, that's "no kidding" ? With history of 2008 bank bail-outs you should have known better.
  - ceol 14y ago
    I think the author assumed ICANN wouldn't allow private entities to bid on new, generic TLDs.
  - wmf 14y ago
    No, we assumed that whoever owned .blog would sell subdomains at a reasonable profit to anyone who wants one. But now we learn that maybe only Blogger users will be able to use .blog. I can understand why they wouldn't sell subdomains of a brand name like .google, but for generic word TLDs we were assuming it would run like .com. Turns out there's no such restriction in the process AFAIK, and now it's too late to complain about a loophole that we didn't foresee.
aiscott 14y ago
TLDs are a nuisance, and I can't be arsed with figuring out if your site is a .net or .com or org. or .whatever. I just google it anyway.
xelipe 14y ago
I found that one individual had applied for 300 gTLDs, Google for 98 including for .lol and .foo. In reality, each company could have used just one gTLD such as .google and could have extended it having app.google domains. To Dave's point, these domains are not necessary open for the public. If google wins, .dad, they don't have to give you a domain in that gTLD.
- jleader 14y ago
  Many TLDs already have restrictions, and are not 100% "open for the public". There's been controversy about whether .job is enforcing its restrictions correctly; .edu is strictly limited to US accredited 4-year secondary educational institutions; .gov and .mil are "owned" by the US government; many ccTLDs have restrictions, for example .cn at times has required registrants to have a business license in China, etc.
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    In the UK, .ac.uk is reserved to colleges and universities, .gov.uk to local and national government &c. What happens about .books.uk &c? Should be fun. http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Kieren_McCarthy http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Kieren_McCarthy McCarthy worked for ICANN for a bit, and now he appears to be running some conferences and a web site http://news.dot-nxt.com/author/Kieren%20McCarthy http://news.dot-nxt.com/author/Kieren%20McCarthy
    - Navarr 14y ago
      This is a bad example only because .ac.uk is technically a second-level domain, and anything under it would be a third-level subdomain of .ac.uk Technically speaking, of course.
      - keithpeter 14y ago
        I take your point fully. Just musing on the country codes being appended to the same words as the new top level domains, just to create more confusion. In the UK some smaller private colleges that are not eligible for .ac.uk register web sites with the .ac country code.
xorbyte 14y ago
I think the net effect of this explosion in TLDs is that the individual appeal of each will diminish, as the novelty wears off. This will simply accelerate the erosion of the address as the primary means of access of a web resource (from a consumer point of view.) I see some obvious parallels between domains and TLDs in how they become limited to singular entities. After all, it's non-trivial to obtain a scripting.com subdomain for myself, and I see no reason why someone is more entitled to such a subdomain than I am, besides being first to have registered the domain itself.
fesja 14y ago
I really agree with Dave, private gTLDs shouldn't be allowed. One thing is to open new gTLDs as .data (interesting!), .kid, .book and another thing is to get it and use it for yourself. That's not how the gTLDs should be run. Those gTLDs have not public interest! Google and Amazon should be ashamed of themselves for trying to buy .blog, .book (etc) and just want them for their own interest when those gTLDs, used wisely, can be really useful. We should write a public letter to ICANN about this issue and email them through here https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/applicationcomment/login;jsessionid=0C5AB731B516C8EF6D20594F60EFEE5A https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/applicationc...
blhack 14y ago
I seriously hate GTLD so very, very much. I want to run an online bookstore. Dare I say I want to start an amazon competitor. Well now amazon owns .books -- Amazon owns books on the internet. That is bullshit.
- icebraining 14y ago
  No, they don't, domains are essentially a meaningless string. Nobody cares about your domain; I mean, people search for "google" in Google! It's no different than Barnes&Noble owning books.com. Meaningless.
  - seanconaty 14y ago
    I'm sure instead of going to google.com you go to http://74.125.225.68/ http://74.125.225.68/ because domain names are meaningless.
    - pizza 14y ago
      I think he's trying to say that a domain name means little in comparison to one's site.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      I go to whatever address Firefox has configured for "Google Search". Couldn't care less if it's google.com or 2a00:1450:4003:800::1008 But in any case, my point is that any domain is fine, not that domains as a whole are useless.
      - andreyf 14y ago
        This is weird: a Google search for that "2a00:..." string [1] results in a link to what looks like this page, but hosted on 13l.blork.ly. What's up with that? 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=2a00%3A1450%3A4003%3A800%3A%3A1008 https://www.google.com/search?q=2a00%3A1450%3A4003%3A800%3A%...
        14y ago
measure2xcut1x 14y ago
I think a more interesting story is the gTLDs applied for by Dominion Enterprises. - Apartments - Autos - Boats - Cars - Forsale - Homes - Motorcycles - Rent - Yachts I wonder what percent of US GDP sales of those products represent.
guscost 14y ago
Anyone who sees Google and Amazon as AI companies should know that this is the next logical step. Imagine owning and selling the authoritative meaning of Modern English and those valuations start making a little more sense.
SquareWheel 14y ago
I'd really like to see wildcard TLDs, and none owned by corporations. I don't know if that's technologically feasible, but I would far prefer that to this mess.
cdooh 14y ago
The fact that people still search for facebook on search engines makes this a big deal because once users get used to finding books at .book and blogs on .blog every competitor will have to fight against that mindset.
- icebraining 14y ago
  And when people are used to search on Google.com or look for books on Amazon, other search engines and book stores will have to fight that mindset too. It's very much the same.
kjhughes 14y ago
All gTLD expansion plans are misguided, especially the recent flood. Being able to register a domain for ~$10 on a first-come-first-served basis (modulo exceptions, which have been handled reasonably well by UDRP) is wonderfully accessible to everyone. gTLDs are prohibitively expensive to most. But beyond the money matters... The simplicity and restrictiveness of .com made it attractive. The .kitchen-sink direction -- blowing out .net and .org in the worse ways -- creates a mess.
adventureful 14y ago
None of this matters at all. The press shouldn't be worrying about it. If you have a killer product, any number of zillions of domains still available will do the trick. Or go buy an even better one for $250 to $1,500 from SEDO. How about a .fm or .ws domain? Or .IO and so on. No time or effort should be directed toward worrying about this. Put your brain back on your product. Someone owning .books or .meme is no more interesting than someone owning books.com or meme.biz. Either your product is amazing or it isn't. When you can beat Google by owning search.search (how about search.com), let me know.
- kjhughes 14y ago
  You're right that it doesn't create any insurmountable problems, but it does matter. It defines new rules for the domain name game, and domain names are an important piece of a company's public face.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    The best thing that could come out of this, is the developers and engineers that actually build the Internet, Web, and mobile Web, and make it all matter --- demonstrate that this is all bullshit by ignoring the new domain expansion and showing that it isn't valuable or necessary.
nostromo 14y ago
The whole thing just stinks. Look at the full list here: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en?tag=mncol;txt http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-resu.... Notice how 70 were applied for by "Top Level Domain Holdings Limited". Go to their website, and click management. http://www.tldh.org/management/ http://www.tldh.org/management/ The exe's bio says, "Prior to joining TLDH, Peter Dengate Thrush was Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN, and in that role led the process that resulted in the historic decision to launch the new gTLD program in June 2011." 1) Get on ICANN board of directors 2) Convince ICANN to create gTLDs 3) Quit ICANN and create a company to squat and resell gTLDs 4) Profit!
- seanconaty 14y ago
  Here is a good wapo article about the story. This is more unbelievable than I thought. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/icann-departures-draw-criticism/2011/08/19/gIQAzpeDTJ_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/icann-departures-draw...
- franze 14y ago
  about the "4) profit" part there won't be that much profit, because of inflation. don't worry, just wait by the sidelines and watch the new bubble.
  - GoodIntentions 14y ago
    I think you are probably right. Large companies will take these for vanity/defense of brand, but I won't hold my breath for mainstream adoption. What was the uptake like on info, name, pro, biz? Not much. If a large corp wants to use these to brand an area of "mindspace" like ".book" or w/e, they could have already done so through traditional branding avenues. - this will just be a 25k/yr adjunct to existing projects/products, but I doubt it will be anything of itself.
- forgotusername 14y ago
  Going by the count of strings in the CSV attached to that page, and the $185,000 price tag quoted on Wikipedia for applying, that's already around $357M raised before the process has even got in full swing.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
You know, gTLDs, as well as more and more draconian internet legislation, are making me want to stop using the Internet as we know it, and switch to something else. Maybe it's Tor, on top of the present internet. Maybe it's an entirely new non-Internet network. Maybe it will be some new P2P network. But if the Internet's freedom and competition disappears, something must surely replace it.
- icebraining 14y ago
  I fail to see how will the new gTLDs affect the Internet's freedom or competition.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    It's no longer a level playing field. It used to be, what, $5 secures you a .com name. Nobody could get a top-level domain, you could only get second- or third-level domain names, and anyone could get one. And importantly, TLDs were neutral. They weren't belonging to any company (although operated by one, usually) But now, you have the poor man, who can afford a $5 .com, but he can't get a second-level domain on the new TLDs since they're owned by a company, and it only lets people have them for a high price or with special conditions. The poor man also can't afford the $200,000 needed to get a new gTLD. This creates a two-tier Internet: The rich, big companies can get shiny new huge chunks of domain space, whilst the smaller companies, organisations and individuals are simply peasants, subordinates, who can only register on the second and third levels. Furthermore, it introduces a huge level of corporate control we haven't seen before. Yes, .com is operated by VeriSign, but they have to let other people register .com names. They can't just do whatever they want with it. On the other hand, Google owns .google, and they can do whatever they want with it. It's theirs. They own that part of the internet, at the top level, and they have complete control. If they own .book, and they don't want to give you a domain, so what, they can not give you one.
    - koide 14y ago
      Domain names are just not that important anymore. Do you really think that not being able to register in a .book will hamper the sales of your new book? Or not being able to own yourname.blog reduce your readers in a significant way? As long as .com, .net, .org and local country registrars keep working as they always have worked, I hardly see this as damaging.
SeoxyS 14y ago
So Google and Amazon are wasting their money on top-level domains that aren't going to stick… It's not like the situation is any different from being able to grab blog.com first, except you pay a lot of money for the privilege of not having to suffix it with ".com."
necubi 14y ago
Something I haven't seen discussed: how are web browsers going to handle somebody typing a generic keyword that is also TLD into the address bar? The chrome-style omnibar that every browser has since adopted is predicated on the fact that URLs are fairly easily recognizable. But if amazon owns "books" and hosts something at http://books/ http://books/, should browsers navigate to Amazon whenever someone attempts to search for "books"? [Actually, is it even allowed to host A records directly on a TLD? I've been reading through RFCs and haven't seen it explicitly disallowed, but nobody seems to have done it with a currently-available TLD.]
- garethadams 14y ago
  Yes. Tonga turned their TLD `.to` into a domain shortener, although because of the browser issue you mention it generally had to be accessed via http://to./ http://to./ However, it hasn't been available for a long time now. EDIT: As pointed out below, http://ac/ http://ac/ points to a real website
  - Alexandervn 14y ago
    My DNS provider (also on my VPS) can't resolve both domain names. I can 'dig' the domain names though and at least visit http://ac/ http://ac/ through it's IP-address in the A-record (http://193.223.78.210/ http://193.223.78.210/).
  - justincormack 14y ago
    Apparently they are not supposed to exist any more. I think they are not allowed on the new ones but can't find source now. https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2009-July/004155.html https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2009-Jul...
- Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
  With Firefox .ac doesn't work but ac. does. So when you access .books you might need to write books.
- rootzoned 14y ago
bickfordb 14y ago
Although I think adding more names is good (why not?), it seems like most people would be better served if the gTLDs were controlled by neutral groups rather than dollared interests or squatters. Why not serve the new gTLDs through charities which operate registration and lookup at cost?
- wmf 14y ago
  The real reason is that charities (especially hypothetical ones) can't justify massive lobbying budgets.
yinhm 14y ago
I'd did a little analysis for fun, found Google and Amazon both applied: APP, BOOK, BUY, CLOUD, DEV, DRIVE, FREE, GAME, MAIL, MAP, MOVIE, MUSIC, PLAY, SEARCH, SHOP, SHOW, SPOT, STORE, TALK, VIP, WOW, YOU. See more on my blog(Chinese) if you interested: http://yinhm.appspot.com/2012/06/new-gtld-current-application-status-stats http://yinhm.appspot.com/2012/06/new-gtld-current-applicatio...
abhaga 14y ago
Reliance, a big Indian conglomerate, wants to own '.indians', presumably because they own a cricket team called "Mumbai Indians".
- bahularora 14y ago
  This sucks, also VeriSign Sarl has applied for '.कॉम' which is hindi for '.com' and '.नेट' which is hindi for '.net'
olalonde 14y ago
This is news? Did anyone really expect every gTLDs buyers to become registrars?
ajasmin 14y ago
It can only get worse. Once that first batch of TLD is approved a bunch of large corporations will try to get their's as well. Initially the ICANN process will be perceived as bloated. To alleviate this competing TLD registars will take over so as to drive down the price and administrative burden. And ultimately everybody and their dog will have a TLD.
danmaz74 14y ago
They shouldn't grant generic names as TLD to businesses. They should only grant their own registered marks: I wouldn't have anything to object to .google, .facebook etc.
- guscost 14y ago
  Honestly, what are our other options here? Nationalize every semantic TLD in Webster's Dictionary? Run a lottery to give them away? Stick with the existing ones?
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    Registered trademarks are, well, registered. It would be easy to only grant as TLDs the trademarks, and only to their owners.
melvinmt 14y ago
> Amazon plans to do the same with .search. So if you have a search site and it's not Amazon's you can't be part of .search. Am I the only one who doesn't understand why it is Amazon - and not Google - who wants to have .search?
- tmcdonald 14y ago
  Both of them have applied for .search. > The .search gTLD provides Google with the opportunity to differentiate its Google Search products and services by linking them to a unique gTLD. Google will be able to quickly distinguish new products and services it develops and⁄or acquires by offering them in the proposed gTLD. > The mission of the .SEARCH registry is to provide a unique and dedicated platform for Amazon while simultaneously protecting the integrity of its brand and reputation. > A .SEARCH registry will: > • Provide Amazon with additional controls over its technical architecture, offering a stable and secure foundation for online communication and interaction. > • Provide Amazon a further platform for innovation. > • Enable Amazon to protect its intellectual property rights. Basically, only for their own commercial gains. The other two applicants want .search to be a place for consolidation of search related domains, which seems like an absolute pipe dream.
J_Darnley 14y ago
Who says "the press" missed it? I saw it mentioned on Slashdot, Techdirt and a few Australian sites (they seem particularly interested). Plus the few links I saw here.
- meej 14y ago
  USA Today published an article about it in their Tech section on Wednesday, I would think they're about as mainstream as the media gets in the US. I agree that this story doesn't really seem to have been overlooked. http://usat.ly/KTMAB5 http://usat.ly/KTMAB5
nonameyes 14y ago
The only people who are in favor of this are those who stand to benefit: ICANN (who likes elaborate meetings in exotic places), registries, back-end providers, advisors (lawyers), and registrars (hello larrys). Did I miss anyone? Any end users who think this will benefit them are clueless. As this blog post says most people have not a clue what the above parties are up to. There are basically two main camps among the applicants: domainers looking to capitalize on type-in navigation and overpriced sales of key terms, and companies looking to protect their trademarks. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. ICANN is a non-profit organization. They are tax-free. But they treat themselves to perks many for-profit companies only dream about; they live a lavish lifestyle (they just raised 300 million for essentially nothing!) for an organization that is supposed to be acting in the public interest. It is one heck of a racket. There will be non-ICANN DNS with some new features emerging out of this fiasco. You can bet on that. ICANN has gotten far too greedy. The conflicts of interest are blatent and insulting.
suhastech 14y ago
I think they should be only allowed to grab they trademark domains. (.amazon, .google) Anything generic should be allowed to the public. Maybe the rights to sell can be sold a company.
filmgirlcw 14y ago
So a year ago, when the new ICANN TLD expansion was announced, I wrote up an FAQ for normal people explaining the process. I actually read the entire 352 page document and took the time to call ICANN (and ICANN does not like me because I've been critical of their policies in the past, so that was no small feat) and get confirmation on how the process works. This week, we've run a number of stories discussing the current phase of the situation, but to be honest, the general audience response has been 'meh.' CNN wanted me to do a spot on Tuesday or Wednesday about it, but it was a scheduling conflict. The reality is, the story isn't substanatively different than it was a year ago. We're now at the application phase. For certain generic TLDs, communities can appeal against the use by one party. For many of the most contentious TLDs, there have been groups fighting for control for years. See .music. The reality is that at this point, Google and Amazon applied for the use of certain TLDs. Some are likely to receive pushback -- cloud and search seem ripe for appeal. Google could argue that "blog" is synonymous with "blogger" -- they might win that (tumblr and WordPres could register tumblr and wp if they wanted). The reality is these won't be issued over night. With some, Google might even have plans to act as an exclusive registrar for some of them. The situation is this. Despite ICANN's claims that this process would be designed to prevent abuse and land grabs, what's happening is what we all expected: land grabs and abuse, but just from the people rich enough to file the application and pay for the ensuing infrastructure. It is what it is. I don't see this phase as a huge story, only because it's the expected next step. The story will be what gets approved and what are the implications of those approvals. It's too early in the bureaucratic process to start trying to get people up in arms about a process the was designed to be as cumbersome and difficult to navigate as possible. Publicizing (again) the way the process works won't change the process.
gyardley 14y ago
Verisign's name grab is more interesting - the most natural spelling of the '.com' TLD in scripts other than Latin. Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. Now that's going to be fun for people who already own .com domains targeted to those audiences, because I could see people reverting to .com in their native script very easily, and unless you buy the right domains from Verisign, they won't necessarily get to the same domain. I imagine Verisign will be the only place in the future where when you buy the .com, they'll upsell you on the equivalent .com in various other scripts.
gesman 14y ago
.accountant ? .afamilycompany ? Who in their right mind would want to build a website based on such a nonsense extensions? I'd vote for more 2-letter short extensions, such as .js Gleb
jrockway 14y ago
Dave Winer likes to complain about everything, but my guess is that this is not going to be a big deal. Nobody important will use the vanity names, just like how nobody important uses the non-com/net/org TLDs now. (Even del.ico.us moved to delicious.com.) We already have .xxx, .co, .cat, .ly, and so on. Why will adding .dog and .ing make a difference? If anything, the people that win are individuals, because there are enough namespaces for them to get something nice. When .us was opened up, I was happy to snap up a 7 character (total) domain name for my email. (That would be a 4 letter .com, completely unobtainable by the time I knew how to register domains.) I think clever people will use the vanity domains for clever things, and commercial uses will continue to use .com as always. Considering that the average user wouldn't know how to access or email a TLD directly anyway, it's not like Amazon is going to be moving amazon.com to "search". (Actually, even most of the hardcore hackers I asked didn't know how to visit a TLD directly either. The key is remembering that all domain names actually end with a .)

268 points by davewiner 14y ago

The concept of top level domains seems a bit outdated. I can only guess that under the new system "store.apple.com" will become "store.apple", "myname.blogger.com" will become "myname.blog", etc. So why not go the other way and just drop TLDs altogether? I know there are a few cases where a ".net" domain would clash with a ".com", but the people in those cases are already used to the conflict, so let them work it out which one keeps the TLD in their name and which one becomes TLD-less. The way it's going seems like a money grab by ICANN.

forgotusername 14y ago
Namespaces exist for a reason. For example, what do you call your network printer after http://canon http://canon gets reserved by the printer manufacturer? Same with http://epson http://epson, whatever. And is http://printer1/ http://printer1/ safe? Only until someone writes a paragraph justification and shows up with $1m. The entire process is a money grabbing farce.
- icebraining 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local
  - Chlorus 14y ago
    .local causes chaos if you're running Bonjour/Avahi on the same network
    - icebraining 14y ago
      You just need to configure them as static mappings in /etc/avahi/hosts. http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts
  - forgotusername 14y ago
    Why should I have to type "canon.local" for my printer name, just in order to avoid an advert to buy a new printer? This destroys any sense of user preference in favor of large corporations pushing their shit further into your face even when you explicitly don't want it. I've worked at many places where http://search/ http://search/ was the Intranet search facility. Not now though, nope. Now your IT department will be under pressure to accept Big Search's latest site-integrated intranet search which they conveniently started marketing around the time they broke all your local URLs.
    - nikcub 14y ago
      The good thing about DNS is that the user controls it. You can set it to whatever you want. Enough people set it one way and it becomes a standard that no board can decide against.
      - because 14y ago
        Exactly. What's needed is more public education. DNS is a basic thing all users should know about. You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. They might not be able to explain how it works or what it stands for, but they know what it is and they know they need it for applications to run smoothly. Same should be true of DNS. Mozilla, not to mention Adobe, can coordinate millions of people to all download the same program (Firefox, Flash plugin). People can be taught how to control their own DNS, e.g. how to choose a DNS server. But ICANN likes users to remain ignorant. They want everyone to use their root server without ever thinking about it. Well, that server is about to become overrun with needless tld's.
        icebraining 14y ago
        You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. People in NY were asked what their browser was and the most common reply was "Google" - and this was before Chrome had any kind of share. People are completely ignorant when it comes to technology.
- ejdyksen 14y ago
  Does owning a gTLD entitle you to use the top of your namespace for anything other than NS/SOA records? Put another way, if I'm Microsoft, can I put my website at http://microsoft http://microsoft? Or do I have to use http://www.microsoft http://www.microsoft? I've looked to see if there is a policy from ICANN on this, but I can't find one. Historically, TLDs did not themselves point to hosts (or have other things like MX or TXT records).
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Some ccTLDs do have A records, though, like http://ac http://ac
    - franze 14y ago
      great example!!! i just tried to submit http://ac/ to hackernews. guess what? it didn't work.
      - Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
        Yeah, it's common to have bad url or email address validation. Many sites do not accept short email addresses at all. As example a @bc.de (space is there intentionally). When it becomes a @ bc then it's interesting to see how many sites will fail with that.
      - because 14y ago
        What browser are you using? This worked in my browser.
      - Cyranix 14y ago
        I believe that TLDs with A records should resolve correctly if you add a period to the end, as in "http://ac. http://ac.. As I recall, this came up when the "http://to. http://to. link shortener [no longer available] was discussed a while ago.
    - ajasmin 14y ago
      With the current trend of combining the address and search bar I doubt browsers will let you go to e.g. http://lol http://lol when you type "lol" in the bar. In fact I just checked that typing "ac" in the Chrome omnibox makes a Google search for "ac" as I would expect. So the value of having an A record on a TLD is limited. Edit: Somehow I missed the bar on top of the search results that says "Did you mean to go to http://ac http://ac " so there's some value after all.
Andrenid 14y ago
I've been preaching for years that we need to get rid of TLDs. If we truly want the web to be a global/borderless place, get rid of the extensions and let us do http://companyname/ http://companyname/ (I know it currently can't work like that, but I'm sure all the great minds out there can figure it out). Ideally I would've liked to see it evolve into a more clean/friendly structure all together... web//companyname, yourname@companyname, etc. Yes we'd get the clashes of people that currently have different TLDs of the same name, but maybe solve that by making the new structure an optional extra, so people buy the "new" domains from scratch (and if you currently own all major TLDs for your name, eg Microsoft/Google/Apple/etc, noone else can register your "new" domain). First to buy the new one, gets it. Person who had the differing TLD finds a slightly different one. These new .whatever really piss me off. It's making the web a messier place, and confusing the average users even more, all for the sake for some greedy fatcats to charge stupid amounts to companies that can afford to throw money at it.
- henrikschroder 14y ago
  And what do you do when multiple companies have the same name and there's no top-level country domain to distinguish between them?
  - icebraining 14y ago
    The same you do know when two companies in the same country have the same name/trademark?
  - rootzoned 14y ago
    If you are ICANN/Registry/Registrar you make money! You send it to auction and let them bid to see who gets it. Or you send things to a dispute resolution provider, e.g., WIPO. Not sure how much revenue they make from these disputes, but it is no doubt growing. Could this problem be fixed with a technical solution? Maybe. But for ICANN, there's little incentive to fix it because lots of money is made in their system if there are disputes and an illusion of scarcity. What is true for company names is also true for trademarks. Like company names, trademarks are both restricted to a particular business sector and they are regional. But ICANN's system keeps things so that there can be only one xyz.com even though there may be many XYZ Corporations around the world, in different business sectors. They do not compete with each other in the real world. But in ICANN's world, they are forced to compete. And this brings in lots of money for ICANN/Registries/Registrars.
kijeda 14y ago
One of the common refrains from this is that it is a money grab by ICANN, but all ICANN is doing is implementing a multi-stakeholder consensus policy that was ratified by the various community groups 5 years ago, and doing so on a cost-recovery basis. While the costs may end up being conservatively estimated, any excess will be returned back to the community. ICANN itself has no vested interest in this other than executing its policies, and if the consensus policy had ended up being "no new gTLDs, there are enough" then it wouldn't have embarked on this program.
- wmf 14y ago
  Pretty much all the "stakeholders" are from the "domain industry", so it's pretty obvious what their "consensus" would be. You're right that it's technically not a money grab by ICANN, but somebody is planning to make money and we've seen that people who work at ICANN can also profit from the revolving door.

unreal37 14y ago

OMG I tweeted this before 8am and it's 6pm now and there's no news stories about it. What's the difference between Google keeping .blog for itself, and some other company charging $50,000 for their normal registration fee? (Some already do that.) Not much.

divtxt 14y ago

"Tech press ignores expected next phase of ICANN's gTLD sales." would be a more accurate title. Like a public good, the dilution costs of issuing gTLDs is externalized and paid by everyone (other than ICANN). ICANN has an exclusive license on this valuable virtual real estate, little accountability and a well demonstrated intention of making all the money they can. Don't blame smart buyers who get in early - they're not the ones who created the situation.

citricsquid 14y ago

The full list of applications is here: http://gtldresult.icann.org/ http://gtldresult.icann.org/

seaco 14y ago
You can can find Google's applications by looking under "Charleston Road Registry Inc.". Amazon is under their own name. Between the two of them, they have some pretty generic applications. i.e. ".lol", ".mom", ".pet" & ".soy"(?) etc... It looks like Google only applied for 3 non-english TLDs. Amazon has closer to a dozen. Might say something about long term plans. Microsoft has about a dozen applications, mostly for things they have trademarked. ".xbox" etc. Apple is in there as well, but only for ".apple". ".app", ".tunes" were both applied for by Amazon.
- jwdavidson 14y ago
  "soy" is Spanish for "I am"
decadentcactus 14y ago
I searched for .rugby. One is the IRB (the main governing body of rugby basically, which is understandable). But also one from "dot Rugby Limited" which if you look closer, is a likely brand new LLC purely created to bid on domains. They also applied for .soccer, and the emails are all "icanntas<number>@famousfourmedia.com", the number I assume corresponding to the number of applications. Rugby is at 23. Their site basically says "we're going to buy tlds to make money off".

ryanwaggoner 14y ago

Meh...if this is how it ends up working, doesn't this mean that gtld's will basically end up being equivalent to subdomains, but on the other end of the URL? Does it matter if some crappy blog is at unicorns.blog instead of unicorns.blogspot.com? I just see this landgrab as guaranteeing that those gLTD's won't end up being that valuable or prestigious in the long run...

cowboyhero 14y ago
It's more likely that some of these are defensive applications, to lock competitors from getting them (eg: blog, tunes). Winer is right, and I'm surprised nobody is writing about this or calling much attention to it. There's enormous potential marketing value behind domains like "beatles.music" or "harrypotter.books" or "superman.movies". With the advertising and reach of companies like Amazon and Google (or even Warner and Sony), I think these new domains have the power to split the web, and potentially turn .com, .net, and .org into something of a ghetto (sorta similar to how .biz and .name might be viewed by Joe Consumer now). On the other hand, it may well be meaningless. I'm continually surprised to see big companies use facebook.com/[companyname] in their advertising too.
- smattiso 14y ago
  Does google prefer certain domains over others? Ie .com over .info as a rule? If so I wonder how this plays into that.
  - ceol 14y ago
    Consider when searching "nissan" in Google, http://www.nissan.com/ http://www.nissan.com/ is the fourth result despite being essentially a parked page that no one would ever really want when making that search. I would say TLDs are very influential.
    - TillE 14y ago
      It's easy enough to demonstrate that Google gives significant weight to domain names that match the search query. It's not entirely clear how that might be influenced by the TLD, though, whether they'd explicitly favor nissan.com over nissan.biz for example.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

I find it most curious that a whopping 13 companies applied for the .app gTLD, including Amazon and Google, but not the company that started the original App Store and which sells the most apps. That company showed tremendous restraint by only applying for the .apple gTLD.

ktizo 14y ago
the company that started the original App Store I'm sure Sage Networks haven't registered .apple http://trademarkem.com/sage-networks-appstore-trademark-application http://trademarkem.com/sage-networks-appstore-trademark-appl...
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  Both Sage and Salesforce applied for the 'Appstore' trademark, not 'App Store' as Apple uses it. Also, they describe add-ons that one can buy/rent for their web platform -- that's not what I think of as an 'app'. In any case, I've found no proof that Sage actually used the name, and Salesforce's add-ons shop is named AppExchange. Let's go further back in time. Software programs on NeXTSTEP have had the extension .app since the first release in 1988. There are plenty of videos around from that time in which Steve Jobs refers to software programs as 'apps'. At the time, it wasn't a common word at all with Mac and PC users. Only after Steve Jobs came back to Apple, it entered Apple vocabulary because he would refer to software programs in that way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_bundle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_bundle
  - ktizo 14y ago
    'Apps' always makes me think of my old archimedes as that is where I first saw the phrase widely used. http://toastytech.com/guis/riscosoldlook.gif http://toastytech.com/guis/riscosoldlook.gif Also, Sage didn't use the name as their attempt to revive their trademark application, which in their filing they describe as "International Class 035: Operating on-line marketplaces for buying, selling and exchanging computer software and on-demand applications", was denied. In 2006. [edit] I could buy apps for the archimedes in a store. An app store is somewhere to buy apps. Technically speaking the apple app store is a package manager with ecommerce functionality. Very much like the linux predecessor CNR, in other words. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_%28software%29 [edit] Wikipedia, that fount of shaky, but vaguely accurate hearsay says that RISCOS was released in 1987. Archimedes computers were widely used in the UK due to being in pretty much all state high schools. Steve was not responsible for bringing the word into the public domain, no matter how much you wish it so.

Harkins 14y ago

Well of course it did, they didn't send out press releases.

seanconaty 14y ago

If you want to give feedback about the program, please do so here: https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/programfeedback/ https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/programfeedb... Personally I think the new gTLDs are an incredible abuse of power. They were cooked up only so ICANN could cash in on being the authority. Having new gTLDs are going to cause a lot of problems and they are prohibitively expensive.

larrys 14y ago
"Having new gTLDs are going to cause a lot of problems" What problems do you see this creating?
- ktizo 14y ago
  <tinfoil-hat gasMark=3>Preferential network treatment for corporate TLD's that are willing to pay would be the obvious starting point for telecoms providers. If they are popular enough you can then place heavy restrictions on standard domains and try and sell the result as a 'safe' internet.</tinfoil-hat> Not that I think that this would work very well in the long run.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    They could/can already treat those companies domains preferentially. Nothing substantial changes in that regard.
- NeutronBoy 14y ago
  You have a dev box on your network called 'test1'. You can host a dev environment there and navigate to it at http://test1 http://test1 . Works great, until somebody registers 'test1' as a gTLD. Then you get namespace conflicts.
  - jleader 14y ago
    Maybe we (or our software) needs to start requiring the period on the end of fully-qualified domain names? That way "test1" is a local name (relative to the default search path), and "test1." is a TLD. In theory, that's already the way it works, except that most software treats the trailing period as optional.

timmaxw 14y ago

What's the point in having so many top-level domains? I can see the value in having country codes, because otherwise there would be an international (probably US-dominated) authority that imposed its power on the Internet, but why any beyond that?

cgusto 14y ago
Agreed. This will just add unnecessary confusion for a lot of people. Might look good for marketing, but I bet most of these will just redirect to the '.com' site.
fletchowns 14y ago
More $$ for ICANN

newobj 14y ago

I wonder if people are overvaluing these gtlds. Of the general public, how many people are going to see "great.books" and think "Oh that's a URL I should type."

incongruity 14y ago
Exactly. And, more to the point, if they're kept private, they become less novel as people very quickly learn to equate them with Amazon or Google, etc. The gtld idea only produces significant value when the tld's are used for public registration and diverse use. At least that's my claim/prediction. Otherwise it becomes just a sideshow. Heck, even with open registration it might. Look at .tv or .mobi or .me or any other "valuable" tlds that current exist. They really don't seem to be as disruptive as some may have expected.
kschults 14y ago
This is the best example I've seen. We've spent the last 20+ years training the public that ".com", ".net", etc equals "website". Now that anything could be a URL, it's going to be a lot more confusing for people.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Which was the reason why bit.ly and del.icio.us never took off.
  - jeffgreco 14y ago
    Sure didn't with the general public, especially the latter.
- jamesbritt 14y ago
  The owners of (books|music|whatever).com are going to be happy because a good number of people are going to see "best.books" and end up thinking that means "best.books.com"
roc 14y ago
Absolutely. In a world where .xxx bombs, I don't think there's much to worry about, as a practical matter. That said, it still reflects horribly on ICANN. Particularly with a former director flipping over to shameless gTLD profiteer. And it still reflects poorly on the tech press for not having at least pointed any of this out.

larrys 14y ago

"Did you think this is how it would work? I sure didn't." Was there something you read that indicated that what they did wasn't allowed? "Another angle on this, the ICANN people must have known about these applications long before they were made public. How could they continue this process, knowing that is how Google and Amazon interpreted the idea of new TLDs?" Everything including the entire process and requirements were public and anyone could have read and determined the specifics prior to any submissions (and voiced objections). From my reading there was nothing to prevent this anymore than if you filed for .winer you could determine only your family could use it. (Same as you get to decide who uses scripting.com, right?) At this point anyone can file objections to granting a particular TLD (the fact that you are the only applicant doesn't guarantee getting granted the TLD). So I would suggest to the OP (Dave Winer) that he writes an objection if this bothers him which will also serve to alert the tech press.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
Was there something you read that indicated that what they did wasn't allowed? No kidding, private entities bid on, to buy, new gTLDs. Did the author assume that they would pay for them and then have to offer them up as a public good?
- ferringham 14y ago
  So when the public regulates the Internet via their elected officials it is bad (a.k.a "socialism"). But when private corporations regulate to merely secure their monopolistic position, that's "no kidding" ? With history of 2008 bank bail-outs you should have known better.
- ceol 14y ago
  I think the author assumed ICANN wouldn't allow private entities to bid on new, generic TLDs.
- wmf 14y ago
  No, we assumed that whoever owned .blog would sell subdomains at a reasonable profit to anyone who wants one. But now we learn that maybe only Blogger users will be able to use .blog. I can understand why they wouldn't sell subdomains of a brand name like .google, but for generic word TLDs we were assuming it would run like .com. Turns out there's no such restriction in the process AFAIK, and now it's too late to complain about a loophole that we didn't foresee.

aiscott 14y ago

TLDs are a nuisance, and I can't be arsed with figuring out if your site is a .net or .com or org. or .whatever. I just google it anyway.

xelipe 14y ago

I found that one individual had applied for 300 gTLDs, Google for 98 including for .lol and .foo. In reality, each company could have used just one gTLD such as .google and could have extended it having app.google domains. To Dave's point, these domains are not necessary open for the public. If google wins, .dad, they don't have to give you a domain in that gTLD.

jleader 14y ago
Many TLDs already have restrictions, and are not 100% "open for the public". There's been controversy about whether .job is enforcing its restrictions correctly; .edu is strictly limited to US accredited 4-year secondary educational institutions; .gov and .mil are "owned" by the US government; many ccTLDs have restrictions, for example .cn at times has required registrants to have a business license in China, etc.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  In the UK, .ac.uk is reserved to colleges and universities, .gov.uk to local and national government &c. What happens about .books.uk &c? Should be fun. http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Kieren_McCarthy http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Kieren_McCarthy McCarthy worked for ICANN for a bit, and now he appears to be running some conferences and a web site http://news.dot-nxt.com/author/Kieren%20McCarthy http://news.dot-nxt.com/author/Kieren%20McCarthy
  - Navarr 14y ago
    This is a bad example only because .ac.uk is technically a second-level domain, and anything under it would be a third-level subdomain of .ac.uk Technically speaking, of course.
    - keithpeter 14y ago
      I take your point fully. Just musing on the country codes being appended to the same words as the new top level domains, just to create more confusion. In the UK some smaller private colleges that are not eligible for .ac.uk register web sites with the .ac country code.

xorbyte 14y ago

I think the net effect of this explosion in TLDs is that the individual appeal of each will diminish, as the novelty wears off. This will simply accelerate the erosion of the address as the primary means of access of a web resource (from a consumer point of view.) I see some obvious parallels between domains and TLDs in how they become limited to singular entities. After all, it's non-trivial to obtain a scripting.com subdomain for myself, and I see no reason why someone is more entitled to such a subdomain than I am, besides being first to have registered the domain itself.

fesja 14y ago

I really agree with Dave, private gTLDs shouldn't be allowed. One thing is to open new gTLDs as .data (interesting!), .kid, .book and another thing is to get it and use it for yourself. That's not how the gTLDs should be run. Those gTLDs have not public interest! Google and Amazon should be ashamed of themselves for trying to buy .blog, .book (etc) and just want them for their own interest when those gTLDs, used wisely, can be really useful. We should write a public letter to ICANN about this issue and email them through here https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/applicationcomment/login;jsessionid=0C5AB731B516C8EF6D20594F60EFEE5A https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/applicationc...

blhack 14y ago

I seriously hate GTLD so very, very much. I want to run an online bookstore. Dare I say I want to start an amazon competitor. Well now amazon owns .books -- Amazon owns books on the internet. That is bullshit.

icebraining 14y ago
No, they don't, domains are essentially a meaningless string. Nobody cares about your domain; I mean, people search for "google" in Google! It's no different than Barnes&Noble owning books.com. Meaningless.
- seanconaty 14y ago
  I'm sure instead of going to google.com you go to http://74.125.225.68/ http://74.125.225.68/ because domain names are meaningless.
  - pizza 14y ago
    I think he's trying to say that a domain name means little in comparison to one's site.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    I go to whatever address Firefox has configured for "Google Search". Couldn't care less if it's google.com or 2a00:1450:4003:800::1008 But in any case, my point is that any domain is fine, not that domains as a whole are useless.
    - andreyf 14y ago
      This is weird: a Google search for that "2a00:..." string [1] results in a link to what looks like this page, but hosted on 13l.blork.ly. What's up with that? 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=2a00%3A1450%3A4003%3A800%3A%3A1008 https://www.google.com/search?q=2a00%3A1450%3A4003%3A800%3A%...
      - 14y ago

measure2xcut1x 14y ago

I think a more interesting story is the gTLDs applied for by Dominion Enterprises. - Apartments - Autos - Boats - Cars - Forsale - Homes - Motorcycles - Rent - Yachts I wonder what percent of US GDP sales of those products represent.

guscost 14y ago

Anyone who sees Google and Amazon as AI companies should know that this is the next logical step. Imagine owning and selling the authoritative meaning of Modern English and those valuations start making a little more sense.

SquareWheel 14y ago

I'd really like to see wildcard TLDs, and none owned by corporations. I don't know if that's technologically feasible, but I would far prefer that to this mess.

cdooh 14y ago

The fact that people still search for facebook on search engines makes this a big deal because once users get used to finding books at .book and blogs on .blog every competitor will have to fight against that mindset.

icebraining 14y ago
And when people are used to search on Google.com or look for books on Amazon, other search engines and book stores will have to fight that mindset too. It's very much the same.

kjhughes 14y ago

All gTLD expansion plans are misguided, especially the recent flood. Being able to register a domain for ~$10 on a first-come-first-served basis (modulo exceptions, which have been handled reasonably well by UDRP) is wonderfully accessible to everyone. gTLDs are prohibitively expensive to most. But beyond the money matters... The simplicity and restrictiveness of .com made it attractive. The .kitchen-sink direction -- blowing out .net and .org in the worse ways -- creates a mess.

adventureful 14y ago

None of this matters at all. The press shouldn't be worrying about it. If you have a killer product, any number of zillions of domains still available will do the trick. Or go buy an even better one for $250 to $1,500 from SEDO. How about a .fm or .ws domain? Or .IO and so on. No time or effort should be directed toward worrying about this. Put your brain back on your product. Someone owning .books or .meme is no more interesting than someone owning books.com or meme.biz. Either your product is amazing or it isn't. When you can beat Google by owning search.search (how about search.com), let me know.

kjhughes 14y ago
You're right that it doesn't create any insurmountable problems, but it does matter. It defines new rules for the domain name game, and domain names are an important piece of a company's public face.
- adventureful 14y ago
  The best thing that could come out of this, is the developers and engineers that actually build the Internet, Web, and mobile Web, and make it all matter --- demonstrate that this is all bullshit by ignoring the new domain expansion and showing that it isn't valuable or necessary.

nostromo 14y ago

The whole thing just stinks. Look at the full list here: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en?tag=mncol;txt http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-resu.... Notice how 70 were applied for by "Top Level Domain Holdings Limited". Go to their website, and click management. http://www.tldh.org/management/ http://www.tldh.org/management/ The exe's bio says, "Prior to joining TLDH, Peter Dengate Thrush was Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN, and in that role led the process that resulted in the historic decision to launch the new gTLD program in June 2011." 1) Get on ICANN board of directors 2) Convince ICANN to create gTLDs 3) Quit ICANN and create a company to squat and resell gTLDs 4) Profit!

seanconaty 14y ago
Here is a good wapo article about the story. This is more unbelievable than I thought. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/icann-departures-draw-criticism/2011/08/19/gIQAzpeDTJ_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/icann-departures-draw...
franze 14y ago
about the "4) profit" part there won't be that much profit, because of inflation. don't worry, just wait by the sidelines and watch the new bubble.
- GoodIntentions 14y ago
  I think you are probably right. Large companies will take these for vanity/defense of brand, but I won't hold my breath for mainstream adoption. What was the uptake like on info, name, pro, biz? Not much. If a large corp wants to use these to brand an area of "mindspace" like ".book" or w/e, they could have already done so through traditional branding avenues. - this will just be a 25k/yr adjunct to existing projects/products, but I doubt it will be anything of itself.
forgotusername 14y ago
Going by the count of strings in the CSV attached to that page, and the $185,000 price tag quoted on Wikipedia for applying, that's already around $357M raised before the process has even got in full swing.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

You know, gTLDs, as well as more and more draconian internet legislation, are making me want to stop using the Internet as we know it, and switch to something else. Maybe it's Tor, on top of the present internet. Maybe it's an entirely new non-Internet network. Maybe it will be some new P2P network. But if the Internet's freedom and competition disappears, something must surely replace it.

icebraining 14y ago
I fail to see how will the new gTLDs affect the Internet's freedom or competition.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  It's no longer a level playing field. It used to be, what, $5 secures you a .com name. Nobody could get a top-level domain, you could only get second- or third-level domain names, and anyone could get one. And importantly, TLDs were neutral. They weren't belonging to any company (although operated by one, usually) But now, you have the poor man, who can afford a $5 .com, but he can't get a second-level domain on the new TLDs since they're owned by a company, and it only lets people have them for a high price or with special conditions. The poor man also can't afford the $200,000 needed to get a new gTLD. This creates a two-tier Internet: The rich, big companies can get shiny new huge chunks of domain space, whilst the smaller companies, organisations and individuals are simply peasants, subordinates, who can only register on the second and third levels. Furthermore, it introduces a huge level of corporate control we haven't seen before. Yes, .com is operated by VeriSign, but they have to let other people register .com names. They can't just do whatever they want with it. On the other hand, Google owns .google, and they can do whatever they want with it. It's theirs. They own that part of the internet, at the top level, and they have complete control. If they own .book, and they don't want to give you a domain, so what, they can not give you one.
  - koide 14y ago
    Domain names are just not that important anymore. Do you really think that not being able to register in a .book will hamper the sales of your new book? Or not being able to own yourname.blog reduce your readers in a significant way? As long as .com, .net, .org and local country registrars keep working as they always have worked, I hardly see this as damaging.

SeoxyS 14y ago

So Google and Amazon are wasting their money on top-level domains that aren't going to stick… It's not like the situation is any different from being able to grab blog.com first, except you pay a lot of money for the privilege of not having to suffix it with ".com."

necubi 14y ago

Something I haven't seen discussed: how are web browsers going to handle somebody typing a generic keyword that is also TLD into the address bar? The chrome-style omnibar that every browser has since adopted is predicated on the fact that URLs are fairly easily recognizable. But if amazon owns "books" and hosts something at http://books/ http://books/, should browsers navigate to Amazon whenever someone attempts to search for "books"? [Actually, is it even allowed to host A records directly on a TLD? I've been reading through RFCs and haven't seen it explicitly disallowed, but nobody seems to have done it with a currently-available TLD.]

garethadams 14y ago
Yes. Tonga turned their TLD `.to` into a domain shortener, although because of the browser issue you mention it generally had to be accessed via http://to./ http://to./ However, it hasn't been available for a long time now. EDIT: As pointed out below, http://ac/ http://ac/ points to a real website
- Alexandervn 14y ago
  My DNS provider (also on my VPS) can't resolve both domain names. I can 'dig' the domain names though and at least visit http://ac/ http://ac/ through it's IP-address in the A-record (http://193.223.78.210/ http://193.223.78.210/).
- justincormack 14y ago
  Apparently they are not supposed to exist any more. I think they are not allowed on the new ones but can't find source now. https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2009-July/004155.html https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2009-Jul...
Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
With Firefox .ac doesn't work but ac. does. So when you access .books you might need to write books.
rootzoned 14y ago

bickfordb 14y ago

Although I think adding more names is good (why not?), it seems like most people would be better served if the gTLDs were controlled by neutral groups rather than dollared interests or squatters. Why not serve the new gTLDs through charities which operate registration and lookup at cost?

wmf 14y ago
The real reason is that charities (especially hypothetical ones) can't justify massive lobbying budgets.

yinhm 14y ago

I'd did a little analysis for fun, found Google and Amazon both applied: APP, BOOK, BUY, CLOUD, DEV, DRIVE, FREE, GAME, MAIL, MAP, MOVIE, MUSIC, PLAY, SEARCH, SHOP, SHOW, SPOT, STORE, TALK, VIP, WOW, YOU. See more on my blog(Chinese) if you interested: http://yinhm.appspot.com/2012/06/new-gtld-current-application-status-stats http://yinhm.appspot.com/2012/06/new-gtld-current-applicatio...

abhaga 14y ago

Reliance, a big Indian conglomerate, wants to own '.indians', presumably because they own a cricket team called "Mumbai Indians".

bahularora 14y ago
This sucks, also VeriSign Sarl has applied for '.कॉम' which is hindi for '.com' and '.नेट' which is hindi for '.net'

olalonde 14y ago

This is news? Did anyone really expect every gTLDs buyers to become registrars?

ajasmin 14y ago

It can only get worse. Once that first batch of TLD is approved a bunch of large corporations will try to get their's as well. Initially the ICANN process will be perceived as bloated. To alleviate this competing TLD registars will take over so as to drive down the price and administrative burden. And ultimately everybody and their dog will have a TLD.

danmaz74 14y ago

They shouldn't grant generic names as TLD to businesses. They should only grant their own registered marks: I wouldn't have anything to object to .google, .facebook etc.

guscost 14y ago
Honestly, what are our other options here? Nationalize every semantic TLD in Webster's Dictionary? Run a lottery to give them away? Stick with the existing ones?
- danmaz74 14y ago
  Registered trademarks are, well, registered. It would be easy to only grant as TLDs the trademarks, and only to their owners.

melvinmt 14y ago

> Amazon plans to do the same with .search. So if you have a search site and it's not Amazon's you can't be part of .search. Am I the only one who doesn't understand why it is Amazon - and not Google - who wants to have .search?

tmcdonald 14y ago
Both of them have applied for .search. > The .search gTLD provides Google with the opportunity to differentiate its Google Search products and services by linking them to a unique gTLD. Google will be able to quickly distinguish new products and services it develops and⁄or acquires by offering them in the proposed gTLD. > The mission of the .SEARCH registry is to provide a unique and dedicated platform for Amazon while simultaneously protecting the integrity of its brand and reputation. > A .SEARCH registry will: > • Provide Amazon with additional controls over its technical architecture, offering a stable and secure foundation for online communication and interaction. > • Provide Amazon a further platform for innovation. > • Enable Amazon to protect its intellectual property rights. Basically, only for their own commercial gains. The other two applicants want .search to be a place for consolidation of search related domains, which seems like an absolute pipe dream.

J_Darnley 14y ago

Who says "the press" missed it? I saw it mentioned on Slashdot, Techdirt and a few Australian sites (they seem particularly interested). Plus the few links I saw here.

meej 14y ago
USA Today published an article about it in their Tech section on Wednesday, I would think they're about as mainstream as the media gets in the US. I agree that this story doesn't really seem to have been overlooked. http://usat.ly/KTMAB5 http://usat.ly/KTMAB5

nonameyes 14y ago

The only people who are in favor of this are those who stand to benefit: ICANN (who likes elaborate meetings in exotic places), registries, back-end providers, advisors (lawyers), and registrars (hello larrys). Did I miss anyone? Any end users who think this will benefit them are clueless. As this blog post says most people have not a clue what the above parties are up to. There are basically two main camps among the applicants: domainers looking to capitalize on type-in navigation and overpriced sales of key terms, and companies looking to protect their trademarks. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. ICANN is a non-profit organization. They are tax-free. But they treat themselves to perks many for-profit companies only dream about; they live a lavish lifestyle (they just raised 300 million for essentially nothing!) for an organization that is supposed to be acting in the public interest. It is one heck of a racket. There will be non-ICANN DNS with some new features emerging out of this fiasco. You can bet on that. ICANN has gotten far too greedy. The conflicts of interest are blatent and insulting.

suhastech 14y ago

I think they should be only allowed to grab they trademark domains. (.amazon, .google) Anything generic should be allowed to the public. Maybe the rights to sell can be sold a company.

filmgirlcw 14y ago

So a year ago, when the new ICANN TLD expansion was announced, I wrote up an FAQ for normal people explaining the process. I actually read the entire 352 page document and took the time to call ICANN (and ICANN does not like me because I've been critical of their policies in the past, so that was no small feat) and get confirmation on how the process works. This week, we've run a number of stories discussing the current phase of the situation, but to be honest, the general audience response has been 'meh.' CNN wanted me to do a spot on Tuesday or Wednesday about it, but it was a scheduling conflict. The reality is, the story isn't substanatively different than it was a year ago. We're now at the application phase. For certain generic TLDs, communities can appeal against the use by one party. For many of the most contentious TLDs, there have been groups fighting for control for years. See .music. The reality is that at this point, Google and Amazon applied for the use of certain TLDs. Some are likely to receive pushback -- cloud and search seem ripe for appeal. Google could argue that "blog" is synonymous with "blogger" -- they might win that (tumblr and WordPres could register tumblr and wp if they wanted). The reality is these won't be issued over night. With some, Google might even have plans to act as an exclusive registrar for some of them. The situation is this. Despite ICANN's claims that this process would be designed to prevent abuse and land grabs, what's happening is what we all expected: land grabs and abuse, but just from the people rich enough to file the application and pay for the ensuing infrastructure. It is what it is. I don't see this phase as a huge story, only because it's the expected next step. The story will be what gets approved and what are the implications of those approvals. It's too early in the bureaucratic process to start trying to get people up in arms about a process the was designed to be as cumbersome and difficult to navigate as possible. Publicizing (again) the way the process works won't change the process.

gyardley 14y ago

Verisign's name grab is more interesting - the most natural spelling of the '.com' TLD in scripts other than Latin. Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. Now that's going to be fun for people who already own .com domains targeted to those audiences, because I could see people reverting to .com in their native script very easily, and unless you buy the right domains from Verisign, they won't necessarily get to the same domain. I imagine Verisign will be the only place in the future where when you buy the .com, they'll upsell you on the equivalent .com in various other scripts.

gesman 14y ago

.accountant ? .afamilycompany ? Who in their right mind would want to build a website based on such a nonsense extensions? I'd vote for more 2-letter short extensions, such as .js Gleb

jrockway 14y ago

Dave Winer likes to complain about everything, but my guess is that this is not going to be a big deal. Nobody important will use the vanity names, just like how nobody important uses the non-com/net/org TLDs now. (Even del.ico.us moved to delicious.com.) We already have .xxx, .co, .cat, .ly, and so on. Why will adding .dog and .ing make a difference? If anything, the people that win are individuals, because there are enough namespaces for them to get something nice. When .us was opened up, I was happy to snap up a 7 character (total) domain name for my email. (That would be a 4 letter .com, completely unobtainable by the time I knew how to register domains.) I think clever people will use the vanity domains for clever things, and commercial uses will continue to use .com as always. Considering that the average user wouldn't know how to access or email a TLD directly anyway, it's not like Amazon is going to be moving amazon.com to "search". (Actually, even most of the hardcore hackers I asked didn't know how to visit a TLD directly either. The key is remembering that all domain names actually end with a .)