Why New Top-Level Domains Like .Google Could Spell Trouble

12 responses to “Why New Top-Level Domains Like .Google Could Spell Trouble”

1. 

   fury-s12

   June 27, 2012

   i think the whole thing is a ridiculous idea, allowing basically any TLD is just going to create a billion address possibilities for no good reason, it sounds reasonable in its basic form to, for instance, allow ALL blog sites to use .blog, its a simple way to denote a page as a blog easy for everyone to use, but allowing 1 company the .blod TLD means that company a and b and c will all need (need in the business sense of must stand out) there own version of .blog so you end up with .blog, .bloga, .blogb, .blogc and none of the technically need to be blog sites either in this new system

   basically instead of simple TOP LEVEL categories the current TLDs are we are just going to end up with a giant list of possible .things

   i can see why a revamp of the current simpler system cant be enacted ie
   .com for all general websites
   .biz for business front ends
   .blog for blogs
   .xxx for porn etc etc

   if anyone can point a genuine reason for allowing companies essentially free reign of TLD choices, that will benefit users id like to hear it

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   1. 

      Stove

      June 27, 2012

      essentially, nobody uses the current system as they should. Generally this is the process:
      -if you’re a real company, get a .com
      -if you’re a non profit, probably get a .org
      -if you are a government agency, use .gov (though not always)
      -if you want to be a fun, use an international tld to spell something (del.icio.us, name.ly, unroll.me, etc)
      There’s a smattering of .info and .biz around, but not much. The TLDs are not being used as intended, they’re essentially just an arbitrarily limited set of suffixes that gets forced onto your url.

      So the solution: Open up TLDs for more. google is attempting to register .google, among others. After that, you can redirect the entire TLD to their search engine – that is, they’re no longer google.com, just google.

      They’re not doing it because they necessarily think it’ll make things better, they’re doing it because the current tld system is broken and cant really be fixed. Think of it as a small-scale trial run.

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2. 

   Checkyourfacts

   June 27, 2012

   Your article is wrong in one area.

   Tell me where and how ICANN will make money out of this? Did you even do the research? the application fee of 185k is not profit nor does this go to ICANN as a revenue.

   Let’s just think for a minute here on another topic. The application fee of 185k was to stamp out false bidders. Let’s assume the fee was lower say $100 each. How many applications do you think they would of received? I would of lodged one for everything. Can you imagine the admin process for this?

   For people who hate the idea. Can I ask you a question. Pretty much .com is all but taken now. What do you do if you wanted to create a website but the name was taken? Coming from first hand experience the website I wanted was taken by another company for a totally legit different reason and I am stuck with a very stupid .net.au

   I see this expansion no different to adding the 9 to your phone number more than a decade ago. We ran out. It’s simple isn’t it?

   Also why are people so scare that it’s going to create a lot of .gltd? You may remember your favorite website. It surely it’s all via bookmarks or search so who cares?

   It orally agree it’s not perfect. But nothing in life is.

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3. 

   Tim

   June 27, 2012

   Once, I would have been concerned. Back in the days when TLD registries concerned themselves about the closeness of the operation to its TLD request (e.g. business = .com/.co, network provider = .net, etc), this move would have been a disaster. These days, it appears, such rules are long forgotten.

   As “checkyourfacts” suggests most people hit a website these days from a search result or a bookmark, so it really doesn’t matter. Taking that argument to its end, there’s no real concern any longer about “domains” in the context of TLDs. Uniqueness is the remaining criterion. Conventions will remain important (e.g. education providers are .edu — although they’re not in the UK and NZ, for example). Country TLDs may remain important but as .us never really flew and non-country TLDs (.com, .mil, etc) typically mean “American”, even that may not be worth maintaining on the ‘who cares?’ line.

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   1. 

      Godfrey

      June 27, 2012

      Agree wholeheartedly. Anyone who has ever designed a database (and that’s all IP adresses are) knows that only one field counts: the ID, and with the internet that is the IP address. If I don’t know the exact URL, I will search for it using engine of preference. I also know that for mainstream items like Bunnings, I will just enter bunnings.com.au . That’s not going to change. The current top level domains will always (insert caveat here) be king.
      Idiot question – won’t IPv6 make the top level domains now be ‘infinite’? flame on, but please teach while abusing…
      Pragmatically, where’s the issue?

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      1. 

         Jamieson

         June 27, 2012

         I think the issue is that despite having a (practiaclly speaking) infinite number of IP addresses, the number of real, practicle, usable URL’s is shrinking (hence checkyourfacts being stuck with an ugly .net.au). I can see how a number of very generic top level domains (along the .blog .search lines) would be handy, the value of the more specific ones seems pretty dubious though…

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4. 

   mb

   June 27, 2012

   Anyone feel like we are going back to the compuserve days?

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5. 

   Gav

   June 27, 2012

   I think it’s a terrible idea – we’ve just about got over the idea that on offline media we need to put www. in front of everything (I think we all know that if you have lifehacker.com.au on your business cards, that’s your web address) and not to mention auto-parsing in email, twitter, facebook etc. Are we really going to have to go back to the cumbersome http:// or www. (or both!) before everything? If google want .blog, they can go out and bloody well buy blog.com.

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   1. 

      ak

      June 28, 2012

      Theoretically wouldn’t it still remain the same whereas you do not need to enter http:// or www. as a prefix?

      For example you type in google.com (rather than http://www.google.com) and then search. This would allow you just type ‘images.google’ or search.google’ or something along those lines.

      I’d be interested to see how this would flow on to print mediums e.g. “visit our website google.google” look pretty strange.

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      1. 

         Kye

         June 28, 2012

         Yes, but only if the server hosting the website has the host headers set up in that way. Otherwise, browsing to google.com for example, without the http://www. prefix would return a page not found error. I can’t imagine websites that receive a lot of traffic will be set up without these host headers in place. Smaller sites will though

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   2. 

      Andreea

      August 15, 2012

      .info is certainly one with poiattnel, but certain country codes can leave even the .coms behind if you get the right name. The problem can be the expectation that the country code and language match up. English is so widely used that this is less and less of an issue.

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6. 

   TommyH

   June 28, 2012

   Time for the grammar police

   I really hate it when people say “of” instead of “have”
   e.g.” I would of lodged one for everything” as stated by Checkyourfacts.
   Surely you mean “I would HAVE lodged one” or even “I WOULD’VE lodged one”
   End of rant.

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