Dotless Domain Names Prohibited, ICANN Tells Google 132
New submitter gwstuff writes "Last year, Google filed applications for about 100 top level domains. These included .app, .cloud and .lol, but perhaps most prominently .search, which they had requested to operate as a 'dotless' domain. [Friday], ICANN gave their verdict on the idea that would make this URL valid : NO. Here is the formal announcement, and a related Slashdot story from last year. So that's that. But it may still be granted the rights for the remaining 100. Is prime dot-com real estate going to become a thing of the past?"
Re:Peh stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
The domain name system is a hierarchical system of administrative authority. When you choose a domain name, you're really choosing the authority who will delegate your chosen domain name to you. To a marketer or a librarian, there may be different priorities for choosing a domain name, but the administrative authority is the only hierarchical system inherent to the domain name system. As domain names move up the ladder, from second level domains to top level domains, the hierarchy becomes flatter, but it reduces choice: You can only get a TLD from ICANN, whereas you could have gotten your second level domain from lots of registries and registrars. Reduced choice also means reduced diversity: As ICANN becomes involved in managing the interests of domain users instead of domain registries, it will have to deal with conflicts that would otherwise have been dealt with on the TLD registry level, where multiple solutions could have coexisted and competed, and ICANN will reduce that space to just one option: whatever ICANN decides. That's why it was wrong to give TLDs to anything but registries. More TLDs are good, because they could have created more choice, but nobody should have been allowed to use the new TLDs exclusively for themselves, because it moves the competition to the hierarchy level where choice doesn't exist. Operating a registry should have been the only admissible use of the new TLDs.
What about the existing dotless sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
E.g. http://uz [uz]
Will they have to disable it?
Re:.com is still king (Score:5, Interesting)
...Given these factors, I would say that .com will be king, for 20 years at least.
Trying to make predictions on human behavior on the internet is pointless and for fools. 20 years ago the masses all thought AOL keywords was the only way to search. We've come a LONG way since then, along with a few game-changers along the way (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, smartphones) that change how people act and interact completely with the internet.
All it would take is another game changer to nullify your statement completely to modify behavior like this. We already don't type FQDNs in favor of being lazy and typing a single word into the search bar that is (now) built into every browser instead of having to actually go to your favorite engine search page and type it in. Yet another example of how behavior has modified itself rather quickly. How long before voice commands take over completely? You really think it's going to be 20 years before I'm just speaking a single word into a smartphone to find something? Oh wait, I forgot, we also do that today.
You make bright, salient points, which in contrary to your statements, indirectly validate the concept of .com strength.
.COM to make their stand), tend to stake the same horse, you will have it this way for a long time.
.bit or .onion or even something far more interesting if it ever gets created.
When AOL was launched, it was "going to create a whole new internet". They had their own browser, interface, portals, etc.
Smartphones were going to replace all of that silly typing, Siri was the next generation's voice.
Facebook and Twitter did away with the need for any other way of communication, your profile was the place to be and eradicated the internet as a whole.
Every one of these were internet-killers. World changing, revolutionary, mind-numbing behavior modifiers. In the end they are all nothing next to the concept of free internet browsing, with your own browser, your own limitless mind and your exceptionally mindless searching which brings up whatever result has the most cash behind it. And since big companies (all of the examples above used
I am going to make one possible exception however. Govt spying on all fronts has the world incredibly nervous and with good reason. This could be the game changer behavior that drives people to use extensions that simply aren't traceable to a DNS query in the traditional way, or are simply part of a peer network like
Re:How about just using the dot? (Score:5, Interesting)
DNS is delicate.
There was an issue a couple of years ago - I can't remember the details, but it involved printers ceasing to work suddenly without cause in some businesses. Offices where they just ceased to function.
Turned out that the printers had been running a check for firmware updates on boot - they tried to reach their manufacturer server each time, but only got a NXDOMAIN, as the model was no longer supported an the update server no longer maintained. Until the day one of the major ISPs decided to spoof non-existant domains to instead point to their own advert-laden 'helpful' search page. The printers thus tried to fetch their firmware update from that page and, getting a 400 response, tried to install it - but instead it just failed checksum, causing the printers to lock up in objection.
I can't recall the details any more, but you can probably look them up with enough googling. Easily fixed once you know the problem, but it shows just how delicate name lookup can be.
How many businesses have a server somewhere called 'search?' If a 'search' TLD were registered, queries would become ambiguous and traffic ends up going to the wrong place.
Google profits from TLD confusion (Score:4, Interesting)
After all with hundreds of TLDs added, who can remember where anything is at? Guess I'll have to google it.
Re:.com is still king (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the most lamentable trends in web browsers nowadays, I think, is making it so that there is only one place to enter a query. When I enter a URL, I want it to be a URL; I do not want it to take a round trip to a search engine.