11 ms·

Google, Our Patron Saint of the Closed Web

297 points by yoklov 12y ago

zanny 12y ago
Wow, that is vile. They seriously want exclusive control of TLD's like .dev and .blog? What the shit? I mean I know Google is a publicly traded company and thus has no real ethics or morals to speak of, but trying to strongarm ICANN into giving them TLDs that should be generic ones is pretty damn evil. At that, what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you get every other TLD ever? I want a .dev and a .blog!
- notatoad 12y ago
  Google isn't having to strongarm anybody. ICANN outlined a process for creating new TLDs, and that process is essentially "if you give us enough money, you can have a gTLD all to yourself". If you have a problem with that (and you probably should, it's a pretty stupid process) you should get mad at ICANN.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > At that, what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you get every other TLD ever? Other TLDs are either proprietary for countries who can set their own policy (ccTLDs), or assigned to organizations for either open or closed registration based on various policies, some "open" (in that the registry that controls them accepts registrations under generally-open terms, with perhaps some limits) and some "closed" in that they belong exclusively to one organization (closed TLDs include, e.g., .gov, and .mil; restrictive, but not exclusive, TLDs include .cat and .edu, fairly open ones include, among others, the ubiquitous .com) The new "pay money to ICANN and get a gTLD" thing is different than the past in that you've got a large number produced on application and going to the highest bidder, rather than a small number each (other than the ccTLDs) created with their own fairly unique justification. But Google bidding on them is doing what lots of other people are doing since ICANN announced this process. Is the process good? I think not. Is Google's use of it especially problematic? I don't see how.
  - WillPostForFood 12y ago
    It may not be especially problematic, but it is more problematic than if they were grabbing .google. It shows that the gTLD plan wasn't well considered. The more generic the TLD, the more there is going to be an expectation that it is open.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > It shows that the gTLD plan wasn't well considered. That ICANN's gTLD rollout, is, from concept to execution, a complete disaster is not a point I'm going to argue against. The question I'm asking is that given that the ICANN gTLD rollout is happening, what is the basis for complaining about the way Google is behaving?
- narrowrail 12y ago
  >what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not >under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you >get every other TLD ever? I want a .dev and a .blog! I'm probably one of the biggest slackers/ dumbest on HN and I know all about the ICANN process (it was highly covered here on HN), and how Google came to control those TLDs. How could you have missed it? It only happened in the last couple years, and it wasn't a secret or anything.
ErikRogneby 12y ago
I appreciate the extensive primary source quoting included. And yet interspersed with a first rate rant. Makes me think of the Daily show.
slg 12y ago
It is hard for me to get riled up over a TLD. Haven't they been decreasing in relevancy for years, first with the growth of search engines and then again with the growth of social networks? No one really searches for sites anymore by typing random words with a .com at the end. At this point, I just don't see that much difference between controlling a specific domain or a top level domain. I would have no problem if Google bought app.com, so why should I care if they buy .app? There are countless other TLDs to use anyway.
- nvader 12y ago
  You do get a boost to your search-engine result page rankings if your domain name matches the search term, for example. If your customers are searching for "find bee mortgages fast", then owning "findbeemortgagesfast.com" will be a valuable competitive advantage to your business.
  - Jack000 12y ago
    everything I've read suggests exact match domains have been declining in SEO-potential, I don't think they have any merit now in 2015. Google changes it's algo pretty frequently so it's hard to get a fix for what exactly works and what doesn't.
- strgrd 12y ago
  Well perhaps then you can get riled up about a nonprofit regulatory organization bending its own rules to serve the interests of The Biggest Fucking Company Ever? Downplaying this because you don't care isn't what the comment section is for. "I would have no problem if Google bought app.com, so why should I care if they buy .app?" I'm not even sure you understand what TLDs are. Perhaps you should Google it?
  - narrowrail 12y ago
    >to serve the interests of The Biggest Fucking Company Ever Going by market cap, I thought that was Apple, no? Not that it really matters. Also, I doubt the parent commenter doesn't know what a TLD is, and it is kind of rude (and snarky) to write such things.
blfr 12y ago
I'm ambivalent on closed tlds and against closing generic-sounding ones but what does this have to do with the open web? It's no different from owning a regular domain, just one level up. How did OP go from owning a tld to North Korea? And what's with the excessive use of quotes? In particular, it's pretty clear what "open" means when applied to Android: https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html
- scott_karana 12y ago
  While Android is technically open (AOSP), phones don't run just AOSP. Not even the Nexus ones. Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps. "Runs on Android" in an advert does not mean "Runs on AOSP". More open than iOS? Sure. As open as Linux? HTTP? Don't make me laugh.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    This is a perfectly valid point. Not even a single Nexus device[0] can run pure AOSP without relying on proprietary firmware for graphics and networking. [0]http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/ReplicantStatus http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican...
  - nileshtrivedi 12y ago
    > Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps. This is exactly what Amazon does though.
    - happycube 12y ago
      ... more like "offering" than "selling", given the massive writedown on Fire Phones.
  - Oletros 12y ago
    > Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps. Like the millions sold on China, India and the rest of Asia?
meesterdude 12y ago
This is disgusting behavior on google's part. I'm down with a .google or a .coke - thats fine. but to claim a .dev, or a .music or whatever is something else entirely. I really wish such behavior wasn't allowed. fuck google
- narrowrail 12y ago
  So, who was going to spend the $175k to make these generally available? A registrar who would probably decide they would let you have one for $100/yr? Did you know that there was a process where you could object to the proposals for these TLDs before they were allocated?
  - WorldWideWayne 12y ago
    I don't think it costs $175K to push a string into DNS, but I could be wrong. Where does that figure come from? When I searched for: ICANN $175,000 I found some talk about a Uniform Rapid Suspension slush fund for them to host 2 summits to talk to the intellectual/imaginary property community about lowering the price to file an infringement claim. I also found the "gTLD Budget Explanatory Memorandum" [1] from their FAQ page [2], question 1.7 and it looks like they basically spend millions because, Lawyers. [1] - http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq... [2] - https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/explanatory-memo-new-gtld-program-budget-22oct10-en.pdf https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/explanatory-me...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > So, who was going to spend the $175k to make these generally available? Nitpick, but it was $185,000 minimum "evaluation fee" (on top of the cost to actually have, and demonstrate that you have, the "operational, technical and financial capability to run a registry"). [0] [0] http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq...
    - narrowrail 12y ago
notatoad 12y ago
trying to equate arbitrary strings with web browser interoperability is confusing at best and malicious at worst. one of these issues is important, the other is not. .dev is three arbitrary letters. sure, i'd like a .dev domain too, but that's purely vanity. if google wants to spend millions buying up vanity domains, good for them, it doesn't really hurt anybody, and certainly has nothing to do with the open web. look how important potentially cool domains like .biz and .info turned out to be. domains are purely fashion. .io is popular right now for no reason other than fashion, if .dev gets locked up by google for their internal use, then it will never become fashionable and nothing of value has been lost. When the world needs more domain names, a new gTLD will come into fashion.
cjensen 12y ago
> Is my conclusion that Apple should get a free pass for hamstringing their web evangelists? No. Get your Safari team a blog, Apple. Let them give a talk at a fucking conference. https://www.webkit.org/blog/ https://www.webkit.org/blog/
- falcolas 12y ago
  Last post: January 27. Second to last post, June 10, 2014. Not really a blog, more of a half-abandoned PR portal.
  - eddieh 12y ago
    http://planet.webkit.org http://planet.webkit.org
    - mbrubeck 12y ago
      ...where there is still only one post from an Apple or Apple employee blog in the past 6 months.
magicalist 12y ago
> The answer of course is to petition the Internet Darling Google... > Why? Who knows. Maybe because Android is “open”, whatever the hell that means. Maybe it is because Google is strongly pro-net-neutrality, and Apple has made their customary “no comment”. Maybe because Google employees have blogs. The world may never know. What? Did this person even read PPK's rant? He was saying the group that could force Apple's hand on Pointer Events is Google, and then proceeds to give explicit reasoning for this. No need to speculate on invent a convenient strawman for the rest of your post. It has nothing to do with hand-wavey openness, it's that they are the developers of the other browser that makes up a huge chunk of the mobile web. If they supported PE, over time it would certainly put some pressure on Apple (though situations like WebSQL/IndexedDB indicate that the pressure might not be that effective). The rest of this is nonsense. A closed TLD is not an attack on the open internet. Honestly, who on earth cares. You couldn't get a .dev address before, you won't be able to get one now. Personally I don't think they should have opened up TLDs in the first place, but, whatever. Meanwhile, quotes like > This is a methodical, coordinated, long-running and well-planned attack on the open web that comes from the highest levels of Google leadership make this article more than a little bit of a joke.
- bsimpson 12y ago
  I can't help but wonder if they registered `.dev` because they have it internally routed on their corporate network now, and they don't want to all of a sudden have to deal with an employee not being able to read an article on a new blog help.dev because they also have a product called Help being tested at the internal URL help.dev. If that's the case, them registering `.dev` might help everybody. It will give you a TLD that you can use for internal projects, knowing it will never conflict with a real site. Considering Apple's asinine handling of .local domains on iOS, a known-good alternative TLD could be a good thing.
  - geofft 12y ago
    Yeah, that was my first thought -- if Google registers .dev and keeps it in-house, this is good for the open web everywhere because we can all use it internally. Probably they can't say that to ICANN's face, but that sounds like it could have been a plausible intention all along. In fact, if Google registers .dev and promises to keep it in-house, they can then tell the Chrome team that it's okay to trust self-signed certs for .dev, or something, thereby letting us all use HTTPS for development.
bhauer 12y ago
I am no fan of the search engine company named after a misspelling of a very large number. But nevertheless, in reading this article I immediately felt that I had missed something fundamental in my understanding of gTLDs: I had never previously assumed that any of the owners of these gTLDs were under any obligation whatsoever to open them for widespread public domain registrations. Last year, when I argued the gTLD plan was a nefarious money-making scam cooked up by ICANN and large Internet corporations, a central premise of my rant was that Google and the rest of the usual suspects would snatch all of the best gTLDs for their own sites. I suggested that Facebook would probably buy .fb, allowing you to navigate to their site by just typing in something like "w.fb" or maybe just "fb" (I'm not sure if TLDs can resolve directly to a host as second level domains can). I never once thought that Facebook as the owner of .fb would permit you or I to register a subdomain within .fb. My understanding was that all gTLD buyers were left to their own prerogative, be it exclusive use of the gTLD for their properties or leasing of subdomains in the traditional sense ala .com, .net, et al. In all the press coverage I consumed about the gTLD matter last year, I never assimilated a requirement for leasing of subdomains to the public. Google's behavior with .dev is just a sideshow to the main attraction of silliness that is gTLDs.
- ttctciyf 12y ago
  > I'm not sure of gTLDs can resolve directly to a host as second level domains can I'm pretty sure that "ping pt." used to work in the late 90's - though you had to supply the trailing dot.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    There are a few; see RFC 7085: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7085 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7085
  - technomancy 12y ago
    Looking up .museum also used to work, but it looks like something has changed.
    - 12y ago
wamatt 12y ago
The article comes across quite ranty. This is rather unfortunate because it may distract, from an otherwise important message: Why should corporations be granted permission to carve off valuable and generic domain mindshare for their own agendas? One could argue "You couldn't register .blog or .dev before, and now you can't either, so whats the problem?" Well, the issue would seem to be that it's reducing the possibility space for everyone. Indeed, there are other competing applications that would in the future be open to all, but will not come to pass, if this closed corporate capture goes ahead. One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog?
- username223 12y ago
  > One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog? Or just give them ".goog", and every corp gets its stock symbol as a TLD.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog? They can (or, rather, could have when the window was open for new gTLD apps.) Anyone who had the money to put down could apply for anything they want. (I'm guessing they applied for .dev because they are already using it internally for much the purpose that they describe, so given the probability that someone will pick it up for some purpose, the least disruptive thing for them is to pick it up as a closed domain.)
zeugmatis 12y ago
Just wait until they make them work only with Chrome.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  And how are they going to do that exactly? Threaten firefox and IE devs with guns if they resolve them? Are you the kind of person who yells random nonsensical crap whenever you see something related to someone you don't like?
zeugmatis 12y ago
Just wait until their gTLD's will work only with Chrome, as well.
weissadam 12y ago
To be totally honest, this looks more like an internal management problem at Google than it does like a real effort coming out of their actual Internet strategy. First off, the application to ICANN states that the purpose of this is to "... provide Google with greater ability to create a custom portal for employees to manage products and services in development." That doesn't even make much sense, and honestly sounds like a bunch of corporate gobbledegook written by somebody who reads CIO Magazine. Second off, this Ben dude is actually the CIO. CIO as in, guy who is in charge of internal IT. Printers, telephones, desktops, laptops, HR systems, financial systems, webpage based paperwork. If there were letters coming out of people on the service side, that would be one thing, but this smells like something embarrassing that snuck out when nobody was looking...
- Kalium 12y ago
  Apparently Google already internally resolves .dev to a host of internal services. They don't want those to conflict with external services. The best way to do this is to buy .dev, that way they can make sure this does not happen.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zeekay 12y ago
Personally I'd prefer .dev for local development ala http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/ http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/. Let's petition Apple to make this default in OSX. Game, set match.
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  I always use .local and it's really frustrating that Chrome leaks these addresses to Google when I forget to type a trailing slash. Instead of hitting my local dnsmasq server, it does a search for the address that I typed in.
jfoster 12y ago
Does anyone think Google has a solid plan for what they intend to do with these TLDs? Are they just making a land-grab without any specific plan?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  A number of them it plans to acts as the registry for and they will be open for public registrations (.soy and .how, among numerous others, are examples here.) The ones it is keeping closed it seems to have very specific plans for -- there letter to ICANN responding to issue of closed gTLDs I think discusses the plans for .dev and .blog (at any rate, they've been discussed in something linked to this discussion), .youtube / .google / .plus are tied to existing products, etc.
raggaenight 12y ago
google is a branch of the us government. nothing will ever happen to them and as long as other countries don't produce a better search engine we'll all have to live with their control of the www
ewzimm 12y ago
I'm glad to see more differentiation rather than everything being .com, as if it were a technical requirement. If we reach a point where gTLDs become an issue, it wouldn't be hard to replace DNS with something like Namecoin. It would only take a browser extension or native browser behavior to toggle alt DNSs like user profiles or VPNs. I don't have anything against anyone buying a gTLD, but if it becomes an issue, we can easily fix it.
secalex 12y ago
A bunch of us who were "open" applicants for new TLDs (my company applied for .secure) tried our best to fight this in ICANN. The "closed generic" was not something properly anticipated by ICANN when they created the nTLD process (it's an insult to Byzantium to call the rules byzantine) and several large companies, Google and Amazon most brazenly, shoved themselves through some loopholes and created a category that was never supposed to exist. The unfortunate fact is that the ICANN board is pretty spineless, and had no desire to restate the rules to prevent the private domination of generic terms (for example, Amazon wants to control the Chinese word for book, which is pretty aggressive for a company from Seattle when the Chinese invented moveable type). The board was so completely dedicated to moving forward that they endorsed the idea of the winner takes all auction and punted all of their responsibility for choosing which applicants would actually provide the most value to the world. Open small applicants have to win the auction using funds drawn from a business model of selling domains. These closed generic applicants can throw tens of millions of dollars at the auctions based upon the value of having a monopoly on a term like .app, .search or .secure. In the end a bunch of us made pretty speeches and got a bit of traction with the EU government representatives in the ICANN GAC (but not the US, critically) but in the end we were steamrolled by the dozens of lobbyists and lawyers these companies send to every ICANN meeting. Too late for outrage now. The whole process made me highly cynical towards the future of the name system as overseen by ICANN. At least I'm done getting food poisoning in exotic locations three times a year at ICANN meetings.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The "closed generic" was not something properly anticipated by ICANN when they created the nTLD process Really? Because its been in their FAQ on the gTLD process since before the application period opened (see questions 9.3 and 9.4) [0] Its kind of hard to argue that X wasn't "properly anticipated" by ICANN when their FAQ on the process said, approximately, "Can I do X? Sure!" I also remember lots of discussion at the time that the process was announced and before applications were open pointing to the likelihood that many of the new gTLDs would be purchased for closed use. [0] current: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq... ; 10 Jan 2012 version: https://web.archive.org/web/20120110192958/http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en https://web.archive.org/web/20120110192958/http://newgtlds.i...
masterzora 12y ago
Obligatory disclosure: I currently work at Google but I don't do anything even remotely related to TLDs or the discussion at hand. These comments are my own and don't necessarily reflect the company's views, etc. I'm going to apply Hanlon's razor here and assume misunderstandings but a lot of this post/rant is exceptionally misleading or even outright incorrect. A full point-by-point response would be more time-consuming than I'd like and more space-consuming than is really appropriate as a comment here. Instead, I've got already-too-long responses to a few of the points and I leave it to the reader to investigate further before cementing any opinions one way or the other. Nor will I bother you with the other 100 applications for the other 100 TLDs, which are probably similar but I haven’t read all of them because it’s a Friday night and I have plans, so don’t shoot me if it turns out some of them are more evil than others. At least he admits he hasn't read most of them but it's disingenuous to take a sample of 1 from 101 as representative and even more disingenuous to insinuate that any of the applications deviating from this sample are likely to fall into the "more evil" category. Actually clicking through even some of the applications listed to "Charleston Road Registry Inc." we see a number of applications--including the ones for .zip [1], .day [2], and .inc [3] among others--proposing SLD registration be publicly available rather than strictly internally. And some of this--like .zip and .day--are proposed to be completely open while others--like .inc--are proposed to be restricted to relevant entities. Other applications--perhaps most notably, .youtube [4]--propose that the public not be able to directly register names but may be able to make use of vanity domains to link to content hosted in that TLD. These applications are also not all active. At least 29--including the mocked .blog--have already been withdrawn. It’s sort of like how North Korea promotes choice because what if some people want to choose a totalitarian regime. This is how the rant responds to the quote "Today, most Internet users have only one practical choice when it comes to how their TLDs are managed: a completely unrestricted model environment in which any registrant can register any name for any purpose and use it as they see fit." It's unfortunate that this quote was taken out of context, however. Reading even just a few sentences further we see the actual meaning of the quote: restricted TLDs such as .edu, .mil, and .gov have proven useful alongside (rather than instead of) the unrestricted TLDs and users (both in the sense of those registering domains and those visiting sites and using services) may benefit from the option of relevant restricted TLDs. For example, the .inc application proposal includes a plan to require registrars to ensure that only corporations are eligible to register .inc domains in much the same way that .edu is only available for accredited US institutions. How much benefit there may be for such restrictions is certainly up for debate it certainly seems a far cry from the "North Korea" comment. That Google should be allowed to close TLDs because nobody will notice anyway: This is the rant's ridiculous response to the quote "Because of the strong user bias toward domains within .com, today a generic .com domain name (e.g., jewelry.com or book.com) is likely to produce more traffic and to be more valuable for a business than a generic TLD." out of context, this quote could mean almost anything but in-context it's not about open or closed nor about whether anybody will notice. Rather, it is specifically in regards to the notion owning the .foo TLD would be a significant competitive advantage over owning the foo.com domain or whatever. "Closed generic TLD". Who even knows what those words mean anyway? This is perhaps my favourite part of the rant. It mocks the letter for trying to discuss the meaning--or lack thereof--of the term "closed generic" and seems to suggest grabbing a dictionary. Even setting aside that the dictionary doesn't give us appropriately rigorous definitions of these things, the author seems to be missing the fact that this letter didn't spring out of nowhere. In fact, the letter is a comment on an ICANN request for comments on the topic [5] in which ICANN specifically requested comments "in regard to proposed objective criteria for classifying certain applications as 'closed generic' TLDs". If it were anywhere near as simple as grabbing a dictionary ICANN would have done that in the first place and commentary on the difficulty of rigorously and objectively defining the terms was perfectly in line with the requested discussion. As I said before, these are only a few of the problems with the rant and there are a number of others throughout. You're obviously free to reach your own conclusions but I really hope that you're informed by pretty much any source other than this rant before you do. [1] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/535 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [2] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1334 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [3] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1312 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [4] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/813 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [5] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/closed-generic-2013-02-05-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/closed-generic-2013-02...
emmelaich 12y ago
I think many companies use .dev internally. I would MUCH rather Google be the registrar than almost anyone else. And you can be sure that someone would try make it a TLD. You can blame ICANN as much as anyone. Though if you are going to make many ludicrous TLDs you may as well allow so many as to make .com meaningless.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
arh68 12y ago
I'm a little surprised, but I don't know very much about the gTLD situation. When I looked at buying a .coffee domain, the Corporations had a window to buy the obvious (dunkin.coffee, starbucks.coffee), then it opened up to the public. I (stupidly) figured most TLDs would work that way. I think by hoarding .dev (and others), Google will just kill the popularity. Since they'll be the only ones using it, it won't be well-known. People will still 'reach' for the dot com first. They can't register googcar.dev and not register googcar.com . I hope they just waste the whole thing in obscurity.

297 points by yoklov 12y ago

zanny 12y ago

Wow, that is vile. They seriously want exclusive control of TLD's like .dev and .blog? What the shit? I mean I know Google is a publicly traded company and thus has no real ethics or morals to speak of, but trying to strongarm ICANN into giving them TLDs that should be generic ones is pretty damn evil. At that, what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you get every other TLD ever? I want a .dev and a .blog!

notatoad 12y ago
Google isn't having to strongarm anybody. ICANN outlined a process for creating new TLDs, and that process is essentially "if you give us enough money, you can have a gTLD all to yourself". If you have a problem with that (and you probably should, it's a pretty stupid process) you should get mad at ICANN.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> At that, what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you get every other TLD ever? Other TLDs are either proprietary for countries who can set their own policy (ccTLDs), or assigned to organizations for either open or closed registration based on various policies, some "open" (in that the registry that controls them accepts registrations under generally-open terms, with perhaps some limits) and some "closed" in that they belong exclusively to one organization (closed TLDs include, e.g., .gov, and .mil; restrictive, but not exclusive, TLDs include .cat and .edu, fairly open ones include, among others, the ubiquitous .com) The new "pay money to ICANN and get a gTLD" thing is different than the past in that you've got a large number produced on application and going to the highest bidder, rather than a small number each (other than the ccTLDs) created with their own fairly unique justification. But Google bidding on them is doing what lots of other people are doing since ICANN announced this process. Is the process good? I think not. Is Google's use of it especially problematic? I don't see how.
- WillPostForFood 12y ago
  It may not be especially problematic, but it is more problematic than if they were grabbing .google. It shows that the gTLD plan wasn't well considered. The more generic the TLD, the more there is going to be an expectation that it is open.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > It shows that the gTLD plan wasn't well considered. That ICANN's gTLD rollout, is, from concept to execution, a complete disaster is not a point I'm going to argue against. The question I'm asking is that given that the ICANN gTLD rollout is happening, what is the basis for complaining about the way Google is behaving?
narrowrail 12y ago
>what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not >under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you >get every other TLD ever? I want a .dev and a .blog! I'm probably one of the biggest slackers/ dumbest on HN and I know all about the ICANN process (it was highly covered here on HN), and how Google came to control those TLDs. How could you have missed it? It only happened in the last couple years, and it wasn't a secret or anything.

ErikRogneby 12y ago

I appreciate the extensive primary source quoting included. And yet interspersed with a first rate rant. Makes me think of the Daily show.

slg 12y ago

It is hard for me to get riled up over a TLD. Haven't they been decreasing in relevancy for years, first with the growth of search engines and then again with the growth of social networks? No one really searches for sites anymore by typing random words with a .com at the end. At this point, I just don't see that much difference between controlling a specific domain or a top level domain. I would have no problem if Google bought app.com, so why should I care if they buy .app? There are countless other TLDs to use anyway.

nvader 12y ago
You do get a boost to your search-engine result page rankings if your domain name matches the search term, for example. If your customers are searching for "find bee mortgages fast", then owning "findbeemortgagesfast.com" will be a valuable competitive advantage to your business.
- Jack000 12y ago
  everything I've read suggests exact match domains have been declining in SEO-potential, I don't think they have any merit now in 2015. Google changes it's algo pretty frequently so it's hard to get a fix for what exactly works and what doesn't.
strgrd 12y ago
Well perhaps then you can get riled up about a nonprofit regulatory organization bending its own rules to serve the interests of The Biggest Fucking Company Ever? Downplaying this because you don't care isn't what the comment section is for. "I would have no problem if Google bought app.com, so why should I care if they buy .app?" I'm not even sure you understand what TLDs are. Perhaps you should Google it?
- narrowrail 12y ago
  >to serve the interests of The Biggest Fucking Company Ever Going by market cap, I thought that was Apple, no? Not that it really matters. Also, I doubt the parent commenter doesn't know what a TLD is, and it is kind of rude (and snarky) to write such things.

blfr 12y ago

I'm ambivalent on closed tlds and against closing generic-sounding ones but what does this have to do with the open web? It's no different from owning a regular domain, just one level up. How did OP go from owning a tld to North Korea? And what's with the excessive use of quotes? In particular, it's pretty clear what "open" means when applied to Android: https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

scott_karana 12y ago
While Android is technically open (AOSP), phones don't run just AOSP. Not even the Nexus ones. Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps. "Runs on Android" in an advert does not mean "Runs on AOSP". More open than iOS? Sure. As open as Linux? HTTP? Don't make me laugh.
- dublinben 12y ago
  This is a perfectly valid point. Not even a single Nexus device[0] can run pure AOSP without relying on proprietary firmware for graphics and networking. [0]http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/ReplicantStatus http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican...
- nileshtrivedi 12y ago
  > Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps. This is exactly what Amazon does though.
  - happycube 12y ago
    ... more like "offering" than "selling", given the massive writedown on Fire Phones.
- Oletros 12y ago
  > Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps. Like the millions sold on China, India and the rest of Asia?

meesterdude 12y ago

This is disgusting behavior on google's part. I'm down with a .google or a .coke - thats fine. but to claim a .dev, or a .music or whatever is something else entirely. I really wish such behavior wasn't allowed. fuck google

narrowrail 12y ago
So, who was going to spend the $175k to make these generally available? A registrar who would probably decide they would let you have one for $100/yr? Did you know that there was a process where you could object to the proposals for these TLDs before they were allocated?
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  I don't think it costs $175K to push a string into DNS, but I could be wrong. Where does that figure come from? When I searched for: ICANN $175,000 I found some talk about a Uniform Rapid Suspension slush fund for them to host 2 summits to talk to the intellectual/imaginary property community about lowering the price to file an infringement claim. I also found the "gTLD Budget Explanatory Memorandum" [1] from their FAQ page [2], question 1.7 and it looks like they basically spend millions because, Lawyers. [1] - http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq... [2] - https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/explanatory-memo-new-gtld-program-budget-22oct10-en.pdf https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/explanatory-me...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > So, who was going to spend the $175k to make these generally available? Nitpick, but it was $185,000 minimum "evaluation fee" (on top of the cost to actually have, and demonstrate that you have, the "operational, technical and financial capability to run a registry"). [0] [0] http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq...
  - narrowrail 12y ago

notatoad 12y ago

trying to equate arbitrary strings with web browser interoperability is confusing at best and malicious at worst. one of these issues is important, the other is not. .dev is three arbitrary letters. sure, i'd like a .dev domain too, but that's purely vanity. if google wants to spend millions buying up vanity domains, good for them, it doesn't really hurt anybody, and certainly has nothing to do with the open web. look how important potentially cool domains like .biz and .info turned out to be. domains are purely fashion. .io is popular right now for no reason other than fashion, if .dev gets locked up by google for their internal use, then it will never become fashionable and nothing of value has been lost. When the world needs more domain names, a new gTLD will come into fashion.

cjensen 12y ago

> Is my conclusion that Apple should get a free pass for hamstringing their web evangelists? No. Get your Safari team a blog, Apple. Let them give a talk at a fucking conference. https://www.webkit.org/blog/ https://www.webkit.org/blog/

falcolas 12y ago
Last post: January 27. Second to last post, June 10, 2014. Not really a blog, more of a half-abandoned PR portal.
- eddieh 12y ago
  http://planet.webkit.org http://planet.webkit.org
  - mbrubeck 12y ago
    ...where there is still only one post from an Apple or Apple employee blog in the past 6 months.

magicalist 12y ago

> The answer of course is to petition the Internet Darling Google... > Why? Who knows. Maybe because Android is “open”, whatever the hell that means. Maybe it is because Google is strongly pro-net-neutrality, and Apple has made their customary “no comment”. Maybe because Google employees have blogs. The world may never know. What? Did this person even read PPK's rant? He was saying the group that could force Apple's hand on Pointer Events is Google, and then proceeds to give explicit reasoning for this. No need to speculate on invent a convenient strawman for the rest of your post. It has nothing to do with hand-wavey openness, it's that they are the developers of the other browser that makes up a huge chunk of the mobile web. If they supported PE, over time it would certainly put some pressure on Apple (though situations like WebSQL/IndexedDB indicate that the pressure might not be that effective). The rest of this is nonsense. A closed TLD is not an attack on the open internet. Honestly, who on earth cares. You couldn't get a .dev address before, you won't be able to get one now. Personally I don't think they should have opened up TLDs in the first place, but, whatever. Meanwhile, quotes like > This is a methodical, coordinated, long-running and well-planned attack on the open web that comes from the highest levels of Google leadership make this article more than a little bit of a joke.

bsimpson 12y ago
I can't help but wonder if they registered `.dev` because they have it internally routed on their corporate network now, and they don't want to all of a sudden have to deal with an employee not being able to read an article on a new blog help.dev because they also have a product called Help being tested at the internal URL help.dev. If that's the case, them registering `.dev` might help everybody. It will give you a TLD that you can use for internal projects, knowing it will never conflict with a real site. Considering Apple's asinine handling of .local domains on iOS, a known-good alternative TLD could be a good thing.
- geofft 12y ago
  Yeah, that was my first thought -- if Google registers .dev and keeps it in-house, this is good for the open web everywhere because we can all use it internally. Probably they can't say that to ICANN's face, but that sounds like it could have been a plausible intention all along. In fact, if Google registers .dev and promises to keep it in-house, they can then tell the Chrome team that it's okay to trust self-signed certs for .dev, or something, thereby letting us all use HTTPS for development.

bhauer 12y ago

I am no fan of the search engine company named after a misspelling of a very large number. But nevertheless, in reading this article I immediately felt that I had missed something fundamental in my understanding of gTLDs: I had never previously assumed that any of the owners of these gTLDs were under any obligation whatsoever to open them for widespread public domain registrations. Last year, when I argued the gTLD plan was a nefarious money-making scam cooked up by ICANN and large Internet corporations, a central premise of my rant was that Google and the rest of the usual suspects would snatch all of the best gTLDs for their own sites. I suggested that Facebook would probably buy .fb, allowing you to navigate to their site by just typing in something like "w.fb" or maybe just "fb" (I'm not sure if TLDs can resolve directly to a host as second level domains can). I never once thought that Facebook as the owner of .fb would permit you or I to register a subdomain within .fb. My understanding was that all gTLD buyers were left to their own prerogative, be it exclusive use of the gTLD for their properties or leasing of subdomains in the traditional sense ala .com, .net, et al. In all the press coverage I consumed about the gTLD matter last year, I never assimilated a requirement for leasing of subdomains to the public. Google's behavior with .dev is just a sideshow to the main attraction of silliness that is gTLDs.

ttctciyf 12y ago
> I'm not sure of gTLDs can resolve directly to a host as second level domains can I'm pretty sure that "ping pt." used to work in the late 90's - though you had to supply the trailing dot.
- icebraining 12y ago
  There are a few; see RFC 7085: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7085 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7085
- technomancy 12y ago
  Looking up .museum also used to work, but it looks like something has changed.
  - 12y ago

wamatt 12y ago

The article comes across quite ranty. This is rather unfortunate because it may distract, from an otherwise important message: Why should corporations be granted permission to carve off valuable and generic domain mindshare for their own agendas? One could argue "You couldn't register .blog or .dev before, and now you can't either, so whats the problem?" Well, the issue would seem to be that it's reducing the possibility space for everyone. Indeed, there are other competing applications that would in the future be open to all, but will not come to pass, if this closed corporate capture goes ahead. One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog?

username223 12y ago
> One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog? Or just give them ".goog", and every corp gets its stock symbol as a TLD.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog? They can (or, rather, could have when the window was open for new gTLD apps.) Anyone who had the money to put down could apply for anything they want. (I'm guessing they applied for .dev because they are already using it internally for much the purpose that they describe, so given the probability that someone will pick it up for some purpose, the least disruptive thing for them is to pick it up as a closed domain.)

zeugmatis 12y ago

Just wait until they make them work only with Chrome.

scrollaway 12y ago
And how are they going to do that exactly? Threaten firefox and IE devs with guns if they resolve them? Are you the kind of person who yells random nonsensical crap whenever you see something related to someone you don't like?

zeugmatis 12y ago

Just wait until their gTLD's will work only with Chrome, as well.

weissadam 12y ago

To be totally honest, this looks more like an internal management problem at Google than it does like a real effort coming out of their actual Internet strategy. First off, the application to ICANN states that the purpose of this is to "... provide Google with greater ability to create a custom portal for employees to manage products and services in development." That doesn't even make much sense, and honestly sounds like a bunch of corporate gobbledegook written by somebody who reads CIO Magazine. Second off, this Ben dude is actually the CIO. CIO as in, guy who is in charge of internal IT. Printers, telephones, desktops, laptops, HR systems, financial systems, webpage based paperwork. If there were letters coming out of people on the service side, that would be one thing, but this smells like something embarrassing that snuck out when nobody was looking...

Kalium 12y ago
Apparently Google already internally resolves .dev to a host of internal services. They don't want those to conflict with external services. The best way to do this is to buy .dev, that way they can make sure this does not happen.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

zeekay 12y ago

Personally I'd prefer .dev for local development ala http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/ http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/. Let's petition Apple to make this default in OSX. Game, set match.

WorldWideWayne 12y ago
I always use .local and it's really frustrating that Chrome leaks these addresses to Google when I forget to type a trailing slash. Instead of hitting my local dnsmasq server, it does a search for the address that I typed in.

jfoster 12y ago

Does anyone think Google has a solid plan for what they intend to do with these TLDs? Are they just making a land-grab without any specific plan?

dragonwriter 12y ago
A number of them it plans to acts as the registry for and they will be open for public registrations (.soy and .how, among numerous others, are examples here.) The ones it is keeping closed it seems to have very specific plans for -- there letter to ICANN responding to issue of closed gTLDs I think discusses the plans for .dev and .blog (at any rate, they've been discussed in something linked to this discussion), .youtube / .google / .plus are tied to existing products, etc.

raggaenight 12y ago

google is a branch of the us government. nothing will ever happen to them and as long as other countries don't produce a better search engine we'll all have to live with their control of the www

ewzimm 12y ago

I'm glad to see more differentiation rather than everything being .com, as if it were a technical requirement. If we reach a point where gTLDs become an issue, it wouldn't be hard to replace DNS with something like Namecoin. It would only take a browser extension or native browser behavior to toggle alt DNSs like user profiles or VPNs. I don't have anything against anyone buying a gTLD, but if it becomes an issue, we can easily fix it.

secalex 12y ago

A bunch of us who were "open" applicants for new TLDs (my company applied for .secure) tried our best to fight this in ICANN. The "closed generic" was not something properly anticipated by ICANN when they created the nTLD process (it's an insult to Byzantium to call the rules byzantine) and several large companies, Google and Amazon most brazenly, shoved themselves through some loopholes and created a category that was never supposed to exist. The unfortunate fact is that the ICANN board is pretty spineless, and had no desire to restate the rules to prevent the private domination of generic terms (for example, Amazon wants to control the Chinese word for book, which is pretty aggressive for a company from Seattle when the Chinese invented moveable type). The board was so completely dedicated to moving forward that they endorsed the idea of the winner takes all auction and punted all of their responsibility for choosing which applicants would actually provide the most value to the world. Open small applicants have to win the auction using funds drawn from a business model of selling domains. These closed generic applicants can throw tens of millions of dollars at the auctions based upon the value of having a monopoly on a term like .app, .search or .secure. In the end a bunch of us made pretty speeches and got a bit of traction with the EU government representatives in the ICANN GAC (but not the US, critically) but in the end we were steamrolled by the dozens of lobbyists and lawyers these companies send to every ICANN meeting. Too late for outrage now. The whole process made me highly cynical towards the future of the name system as overseen by ICANN. At least I'm done getting food poisoning in exotic locations three times a year at ICANN meetings.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> The "closed generic" was not something properly anticipated by ICANN when they created the nTLD process Really? Because its been in their FAQ on the gTLD process since before the application period opened (see questions 9.3 and 9.4) [0] Its kind of hard to argue that X wasn't "properly anticipated" by ICANN when their FAQ on the process said, approximately, "Can I do X? Sure!" I also remember lots of discussion at the time that the process was announced and before applications were open pointing to the likelihood that many of the new gTLDs would be purchased for closed use. [0] current: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq... ; 10 Jan 2012 version: https://web.archive.org/web/20120110192958/http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en https://web.archive.org/web/20120110192958/http://newgtlds.i...

masterzora 12y ago

Obligatory disclosure: I currently work at Google but I don't do anything even remotely related to TLDs or the discussion at hand. These comments are my own and don't necessarily reflect the company's views, etc. I'm going to apply Hanlon's razor here and assume misunderstandings but a lot of this post/rant is exceptionally misleading or even outright incorrect. A full point-by-point response would be more time-consuming than I'd like and more space-consuming than is really appropriate as a comment here. Instead, I've got already-too-long responses to a few of the points and I leave it to the reader to investigate further before cementing any opinions one way or the other. Nor will I bother you with the other 100 applications for the other 100 TLDs, which are probably similar but I haven’t read all of them because it’s a Friday night and I have plans, so don’t shoot me if it turns out some of them are more evil than others. At least he admits he hasn't read most of them but it's disingenuous to take a sample of 1 from 101 as representative and even more disingenuous to insinuate that any of the applications deviating from this sample are likely to fall into the "more evil" category. Actually clicking through even some of the applications listed to "Charleston Road Registry Inc." we see a number of applications--including the ones for .zip [1], .day [2], and .inc [3] among others--proposing SLD registration be publicly available rather than strictly internally. And some of this--like .zip and .day--are proposed to be completely open while others--like .inc--are proposed to be restricted to relevant entities. Other applications--perhaps most notably, .youtube [4]--propose that the public not be able to directly register names but may be able to make use of vanity domains to link to content hosted in that TLD. These applications are also not all active. At least 29--including the mocked .blog--have already been withdrawn. It’s sort of like how North Korea promotes choice because what if some people want to choose a totalitarian regime. This is how the rant responds to the quote "Today, most Internet users have only one practical choice when it comes to how their TLDs are managed: a completely unrestricted model environment in which any registrant can register any name for any purpose and use it as they see fit." It's unfortunate that this quote was taken out of context, however. Reading even just a few sentences further we see the actual meaning of the quote: restricted TLDs such as .edu, .mil, and .gov have proven useful alongside (rather than instead of) the unrestricted TLDs and users (both in the sense of those registering domains and those visiting sites and using services) may benefit from the option of relevant restricted TLDs. For example, the .inc application proposal includes a plan to require registrars to ensure that only corporations are eligible to register .inc domains in much the same way that .edu is only available for accredited US institutions. How much benefit there may be for such restrictions is certainly up for debate it certainly seems a far cry from the "North Korea" comment. That Google should be allowed to close TLDs because nobody will notice anyway: This is the rant's ridiculous response to the quote "Because of the strong user bias toward domains within .com, today a generic .com domain name (e.g., jewelry.com or book.com) is likely to produce more traffic and to be more valuable for a business than a generic TLD." out of context, this quote could mean almost anything but in-context it's not about open or closed nor about whether anybody will notice. Rather, it is specifically in regards to the notion owning the .foo TLD would be a significant competitive advantage over owning the foo.com domain or whatever. "Closed generic TLD". Who even knows what those words mean anyway? This is perhaps my favourite part of the rant. It mocks the letter for trying to discuss the meaning--or lack thereof--of the term "closed generic" and seems to suggest grabbing a dictionary. Even setting aside that the dictionary doesn't give us appropriately rigorous definitions of these things, the author seems to be missing the fact that this letter didn't spring out of nowhere. In fact, the letter is a comment on an ICANN request for comments on the topic [5] in which ICANN specifically requested comments "in regard to proposed objective criteria for classifying certain applications as 'closed generic' TLDs". If it were anywhere near as simple as grabbing a dictionary ICANN would have done that in the first place and commentary on the difficulty of rigorously and objectively defining the terms was perfectly in line with the requested discussion. As I said before, these are only a few of the problems with the rant and there are a number of others throughout. You're obviously free to reach your own conclusions but I really hope that you're informed by pretty much any source other than this rant before you do. [1] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/535 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [2] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1334 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [3] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1312 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [4] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/813 https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [5] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/closed-generic-2013-02-05-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/closed-generic-2013-02...

emmelaich 12y ago

I think many companies use .dev internally. I would MUCH rather Google be the registrar than almost anyone else. And you can be sure that someone would try make it a TLD. You can blame ICANN as much as anyone. Though if you are going to make many ludicrous TLDs you may as well allow so many as to make .com meaningless.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

arh68 12y ago

I'm a little surprised, but I don't know very much about the gTLD situation. When I looked at buying a .coffee domain, the Corporations had a window to buy the obvious (dunkin.coffee, starbucks.coffee), then it opened up to the public. I (stupidly) figured most TLDs would work that way. I think by hoarding .dev (and others), Google will just kill the popularity. Since they'll be the only ones using it, it won't be well-known. People will still 'reach' for the dot com first. They can't register googcar.dev and not register googcar.com . I hope they just waste the whole thing in obscurity.