9 ms·

Good? These new top level domains are ridiculous, imagine talking to some less tech savy person about one of these "Hey, check out my amazon shop at coolstuff

Good? These new top level domains are ridiculous, imagine talking to some less tech savy person about one of these "Hey, check out my amazon shop at coolstuff dot amazon" "coolstuff dot amazon dot com?" "No coolstuff dot amazon" "huh?" Com stands for commercial, amazon shouldn't need their own domain to sell stuff. EDIT: commercial, not commerce

maaarghk 12y ago
Totally agree. I was already annoyed at the fact companies are now allowed to apply in the first place.
- genericuser 12y ago
  .com is owned by a single company(and other top level domains owned by other companies), why shouldn't more companies own other top level domains? Also, in regards to gp, saying .com is for all commercial companies is the equivalent of saying all commercial companies have to be in business with Verisign.
  - zokier 12y ago
    > .com is owned by a single company(and other top level domains owned by other companies), why shouldn't more companies own other top level domains? I'd be for abolising .com (and other gtlds) too.
    - damon_c 12y ago
      That seems like it could be a little messy... are you sure? Also, if you think about what the world might be like 50 years from now, ".com" and ".org" might be remnants of the past we remember fondly. They will likely become less important on their own.
      - Crito 12y ago
        Since he specifically called out gtld's, I suspect he is a fan of cctld's. The only real problem as far as I see it with cctlds is that it reinforces the notion that you must pick a country to be subservient to, but you aren't really escaping that by using gtlds..
        zokier 12y ago
        Yes, I'm a fan on cctlds. Only exception I'd be willing to accept might be .int for organizations like UN that are truly outside any country. Like it or not, everyone else is subject to some country or another.
  - forgottenpass 12y ago
    .com is owned by a single company(and other top level domains owned by other companies), why shouldn't more companies own other top level domains? The fact single companies manage TLDs doesn't factor into my thought process on how we should manage the TLD namespace. It sounds like your problem is really with Verisign et al., perhaps the fight you're looking for is how individual gTLDs are managed in the first place, not assuming that part of the model is fixed and exploding the namespace in some bizarro business fairness.
    - genericuser 12y ago
      I would simply like to see more companies competing in the space of providing registration of domains for their top level domain than currently exist. As far as I am concerned I see no reason not to have thousands or millions of top level domains. I am a believer that with ample time and more options we will see the false assumption that everything is a .com become less widespread. (Although this belief is largely based on wishful thinking, I will admit)
qaz_plm 12y ago
commercial
motoboi 12y ago
It maybe just a matter of conditioning. We are so used to the old top level domains, but, maybe, we can quickly learn to be used to them as well.
- tjr 12y ago
  We certainly can. Once-unusual top-level domains like .io and .ly seem normal now.
  - endersshadow 12y ago
    To us, maybe, but not to the layman. I work with a theatre company, and we use Artful.ly for ticketing, etc. I have to explain to so many people that it's artful.ly, not artfully.com. At this point, we just tell people to go to our site and buy the tickets from there.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    Never mind that .com itself (as a household term) is all of 15 years old. Not exactly a geological timescale.
    - blogimus 12y ago
      > Not exactly a geological timescale A. Humans don't live on a geological timescale B. .com TLD's are in the formidable first ~15 years of socializing the web the mass public.
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  Well, yes, some of it is that. But it's not just that. The programmers here should be familiar with the idea of namespace pollution. We only have one TLD space in the ICANN root and are discussing painting ourselves into a corner, tread lightly.
jp555 12y ago
"Oh, let me write down that web address so I can type it into the address bar in my browser later" said no one ever.
- bnegreve 12y ago
  It doesn't sound right, with this logic DNS would be useless. Even if I use search engine to reach most websites, the domain name remains an effective way to distinguish legitimate websites from illegitimate ones.
  - jp555 12y ago
    I mean that if I'm physically with someone talking with our mouths about a domain address and one wants to visit said address, 99.9999% of time the result is: "Cool, text/email/tweet/etc me that link".
    - jfoster 12y ago
      Is that because so many domains have become obscure due to the huge .com demand? If there is now a plethora of easily-communicated TLDs around, that ought to result in more memorable URLs. To illustrate that point, would you ask someone to send you the link if they had mentioned "shop.com"? What if it were "book.shop" or "teddybear.store"?
      - jp555 12y ago
        I think its because most people have a browser in their pocket at all times. Why would I write it down for you when I can just text you a clickable URL? I have a smartphone within a few feet of me much more often than pen & paper.
    - bentcorner 12y ago
      That's the happy path. Sometimes a site gets brought up in conversation, (hey, I found this site called HN with a bunch of neat tech information on it), and it's just not important enough to stop the flow of conversation right then and there. Later while you're looking in the fridge you realize, hey, that actually was sort of interesting. What was that site again? hn.com? hacker.news? What's this ycombinator thing, that can't be right.
cylinder 12y ago
I agree that they are ridiculous, but something needs to be done about domain speculation and .com dominance. It's becoming too hard to create a new business when pretty much every domain is taken. Consumers don't respect non-.Coms (even .net), and it's far too cheap and easy to register .coms and speculate on them unproductively.
genericuser 12y ago
Do less tech savvy people primarily convey urls to one another verbally as opposed to sending a link? I mean I might have that conversation but, if I actually want them to checkout my site I am going to send them a link or at least write down the URL for them regardless of how simple it is. I know if someone verbally tells me a URL I am not going to remember what it was, or even that I should go to it.
deelowe 12y ago
"Come over to my house, the address is 2245 Azure Bluff." "You mean 2245 Azure St." "No 2245 Azure Bluff" I don't see a different here. There's nothing special about .com. Plus, it's not going to scale anyways. Why not have arbitrary TLDs? There's no technical reason why this is an issue.
- blueyellow2 12y ago
  There's a big difference there. Your comment is written like you've never ventured outside of the tech industry.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  More like "2245 Azure Bluff, or 2245 Azure Bluff Street?"
  - FireBeyond 12y ago
    There's a road in Melbourne called "High Street Road" - as opposed to High Street.
- jebus989 12y ago
  Agree, they're not a finite resource that should be miserly handed down every few years by ICANN. Register whateveryouwant.whoopdedoo for all it matters.
- cantankerous 12y ago
  "There's no technical reason why this is an issue." This is beside OP's point. This is a human problem; not a technical one.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  If you allow arbitrary TLDs, you have to have some reasonable rules governing registration of secondary and maybe tertiary subdomains. Otherwise, the namespace will be saturated and the prices for new domains will be obscene.
  - 12y ago
gnopgnip 12y ago
.com is for commercial
leorocky 12y ago
This is going to matter to so few people. Most people just type stuff into google anyway and browses are starting to hide the URL.
- astrodust 12y ago
  That's why so many people fall for phishing attacks. "amazon.sketchysite.cn"? Seems legit!
skizm 12y ago
People adapt. They'll get used to it. I hope so at least. Paying top dollar for simple dot com names is something I don't like.
vidarh 12y ago
Back in the day, I co-founded a company that offered vanity e-mail addresses of the form firstname@lastname.some-tld. It eventually morphed into the .name registry. But what we did not realise, apart from misjudging demand, was how confused people get over this. Even now, while I have my lastname.com that pre-dates that business by several years, I still have to spell out my e-mail address, often several times, to people who know my name. Trying to short-circuiting that process with "it's just my firstname at my lastname dot com" rarely works, and often ends up with them asking if is at gmail.com or something. So I dutifully spell it out, and many people noticeably don't make the connection between the domain name and my lastname even after they've written it down. Familiarity is often far simpler.
- Kequc 12y ago
  I've found that "My firstname dot my lastname at gmail" works great over the phone. I don't even have to say dot com everyone understands "gmail." It's a good email address, custom domains for email addresses are somewhat rare and often end up being more confusing than helpful. Unless it is support at domain dot com or info at domain dot com. Not for personal addresses facing the general public though, I wouldn't think. Even something as simple as "My firstname at domain dot com" you'll end up spelling out the domain one time out of two whether you've been talking about it - or not.
  - datr 12y ago
    There is an advantage to using firstname@lastname.com and that is if google decides to block your gmail account you aren't completely screwed. You can simply change the MX record for your domain, point it at a different service provider and continue getting the email sent to you.
    - Piskvorrr 12y ago
      True, but besides the point. The problem is users are conditioned to think that personal addresses don't exist beyond the big e-mail providers. "Not GMail or Yahoo? You, sir, are a liar, such e-mail address can not possibly exist!" (that is an exaggerated version of what I get with firstname@lastname.com: "so, firstname.lastname@gmail.com?" "no, firstname, at, lastname, dot, com." "so, firstname, dot, lastname, dot, com, at, gmail, dot, com?" ...)

maaarghk 12y ago

Totally agree. I was already annoyed at the fact companies are now allowed to apply in the first place.

genericuser 12y ago
.com is owned by a single company(and other top level domains owned by other companies), why shouldn't more companies own other top level domains? Also, in regards to gp, saying .com is for all commercial companies is the equivalent of saying all commercial companies have to be in business with Verisign.
- zokier 12y ago
  > .com is owned by a single company(and other top level domains owned by other companies), why shouldn't more companies own other top level domains? I'd be for abolising .com (and other gtlds) too.
  - damon_c 12y ago
    That seems like it could be a little messy... are you sure? Also, if you think about what the world might be like 50 years from now, ".com" and ".org" might be remnants of the past we remember fondly. They will likely become less important on their own.
    - Crito 12y ago
      Since he specifically called out gtld's, I suspect he is a fan of cctld's. The only real problem as far as I see it with cctlds is that it reinforces the notion that you must pick a country to be subservient to, but you aren't really escaping that by using gtlds..
      - zokier 12y ago
        Yes, I'm a fan on cctlds. Only exception I'd be willing to accept might be .int for organizations like UN that are truly outside any country. Like it or not, everyone else is subject to some country or another.
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  .com is owned by a single company(and other top level domains owned by other companies), why shouldn't more companies own other top level domains? The fact single companies manage TLDs doesn't factor into my thought process on how we should manage the TLD namespace. It sounds like your problem is really with Verisign et al., perhaps the fight you're looking for is how individual gTLDs are managed in the first place, not assuming that part of the model is fixed and exploding the namespace in some bizarro business fairness.
  - genericuser 12y ago
    I would simply like to see more companies competing in the space of providing registration of domains for their top level domain than currently exist. As far as I am concerned I see no reason not to have thousands or millions of top level domains. I am a believer that with ample time and more options we will see the false assumption that everything is a .com become less widespread. (Although this belief is largely based on wishful thinking, I will admit)

qaz_plm 12y ago

commercial

motoboi 12y ago

It maybe just a matter of conditioning. We are so used to the old top level domains, but, maybe, we can quickly learn to be used to them as well.

tjr 12y ago
We certainly can. Once-unusual top-level domains like .io and .ly seem normal now.
- endersshadow 12y ago
  To us, maybe, but not to the layman. I work with a theatre company, and we use Artful.ly for ticketing, etc. I have to explain to so many people that it's artful.ly, not artfully.com. At this point, we just tell people to go to our site and buy the tickets from there.
- mseebach 12y ago
  Never mind that .com itself (as a household term) is all of 15 years old. Not exactly a geological timescale.
  - blogimus 12y ago
    > Not exactly a geological timescale A. Humans don't live on a geological timescale B. .com TLD's are in the formidable first ~15 years of socializing the web the mass public.
forgottenpass 12y ago
Well, yes, some of it is that. But it's not just that. The programmers here should be familiar with the idea of namespace pollution. We only have one TLD space in the ICANN root and are discussing painting ourselves into a corner, tread lightly.

jp555 12y ago

"Oh, let me write down that web address so I can type it into the address bar in my browser later" said no one ever.

bnegreve 12y ago
It doesn't sound right, with this logic DNS would be useless. Even if I use search engine to reach most websites, the domain name remains an effective way to distinguish legitimate websites from illegitimate ones.
- jp555 12y ago
  I mean that if I'm physically with someone talking with our mouths about a domain address and one wants to visit said address, 99.9999% of time the result is: "Cool, text/email/tweet/etc me that link".
  - jfoster 12y ago
    Is that because so many domains have become obscure due to the huge .com demand? If there is now a plethora of easily-communicated TLDs around, that ought to result in more memorable URLs. To illustrate that point, would you ask someone to send you the link if they had mentioned "shop.com"? What if it were "book.shop" or "teddybear.store"?
    - jp555 12y ago
      I think its because most people have a browser in their pocket at all times. Why would I write it down for you when I can just text you a clickable URL? I have a smartphone within a few feet of me much more often than pen & paper.
  - bentcorner 12y ago
    That's the happy path. Sometimes a site gets brought up in conversation, (hey, I found this site called HN with a bunch of neat tech information on it), and it's just not important enough to stop the flow of conversation right then and there. Later while you're looking in the fridge you realize, hey, that actually was sort of interesting. What was that site again? hn.com? hacker.news? What's this ycombinator thing, that can't be right.

cylinder 12y ago

I agree that they are ridiculous, but something needs to be done about domain speculation and .com dominance. It's becoming too hard to create a new business when pretty much every domain is taken. Consumers don't respect non-.Coms (even .net), and it's far too cheap and easy to register .coms and speculate on them unproductively.

genericuser 12y ago

Do less tech savvy people primarily convey urls to one another verbally as opposed to sending a link? I mean I might have that conversation but, if I actually want them to checkout my site I am going to send them a link or at least write down the URL for them regardless of how simple it is. I know if someone verbally tells me a URL I am not going to remember what it was, or even that I should go to it.

deelowe 12y ago

"Come over to my house, the address is 2245 Azure Bluff." "You mean 2245 Azure St." "No 2245 Azure Bluff" I don't see a different here. There's nothing special about .com. Plus, it's not going to scale anyways. Why not have arbitrary TLDs? There's no technical reason why this is an issue.

blueyellow2 12y ago
There's a big difference there. Your comment is written like you've never ventured outside of the tech industry.
pessimizer 12y ago
More like "2245 Azure Bluff, or 2245 Azure Bluff Street?"
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  There's a road in Melbourne called "High Street Road" - as opposed to High Street.
jebus989 12y ago
Agree, they're not a finite resource that should be miserly handed down every few years by ICANN. Register whateveryouwant.whoopdedoo for all it matters.
cantankerous 12y ago
"There's no technical reason why this is an issue." This is beside OP's point. This is a human problem; not a technical one.
ForHackernews 12y ago
If you allow arbitrary TLDs, you have to have some reasonable rules governing registration of secondary and maybe tertiary subdomains. Otherwise, the namespace will be saturated and the prices for new domains will be obscene.
- 12y ago

gnopgnip 12y ago

.com is for commercial

leorocky 12y ago

This is going to matter to so few people. Most people just type stuff into google anyway and browses are starting to hide the URL.

astrodust 12y ago
That's why so many people fall for phishing attacks. "amazon.sketchysite.cn"? Seems legit!

skizm 12y ago

People adapt. They'll get used to it. I hope so at least. Paying top dollar for simple dot com names is something I don't like.

vidarh 12y ago

Back in the day, I co-founded a company that offered vanity e-mail addresses of the form firstname@lastname.some-tld. It eventually morphed into the .name registry. But what we did not realise, apart from misjudging demand, was how confused people get over this. Even now, while I have my lastname.com that pre-dates that business by several years, I still have to spell out my e-mail address, often several times, to people who know my name. Trying to short-circuiting that process with "it's just my firstname at my lastname dot com" rarely works, and often ends up with them asking if is at gmail.com or something. So I dutifully spell it out, and many people noticeably don't make the connection between the domain name and my lastname even after they've written it down. Familiarity is often far simpler.

Kequc 12y ago
I've found that "My firstname dot my lastname at gmail" works great over the phone. I don't even have to say dot com everyone understands "gmail." It's a good email address, custom domains for email addresses are somewhat rare and often end up being more confusing than helpful. Unless it is support at domain dot com or info at domain dot com. Not for personal addresses facing the general public though, I wouldn't think. Even something as simple as "My firstname at domain dot com" you'll end up spelling out the domain one time out of two whether you've been talking about it - or not.
- datr 12y ago
  There is an advantage to using firstname@lastname.com and that is if google decides to block your gmail account you aren't completely screwed. You can simply change the MX record for your domain, point it at a different service provider and continue getting the email sent to you.
  - Piskvorrr 12y ago
    True, but besides the point. The problem is users are conditioned to think that personal addresses don't exist beyond the big e-mail providers. "Not GMail or Yahoo? You, sir, are a liar, such e-mail address can not possibly exist!" (that is an exaggerated version of what I get with firstname@lastname.com: "so, firstname.lastname@gmail.com?" "no, firstname, at, lastname, dot, com." "so, firstname, dot, lastname, dot, com, at, gmail, dot, com?" ...)