First New Generic Top Level Domains Opening 198
umdenken points out that the first batch of generic Top Level Domains will go live within the next several days, including .bike, .guru, .clothing, .holdings, .singles, .plumbing, and .ventures. (Early access began Jan. 29th.) ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade says there is currently huge demand for ICANN to reopen their program to let companies run their own gTLD. He said, "Many, many brands and many, many communities didn't know about the GTLD program. I get significant amounts of questions about when can we open the next round, because certainly there is a bit of angst that if Canon [who applied for the .canon gTLD] uses this to do an incredible mass customization campaign to win users to their product, I'm sure the brand next to them will say "Why aren't we doing this?" So I do believe this will snowball. But many will find a .com or whatever they have now will be good enough, and I believe that one excludes the other." He also said the $185,000 price tag to do so is likely to drop.
Re:why do we need generic top level domains anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
why do we even have .com or .org or .net on the end.
To identify which registration authority the domain name was created under.
Also... to distinguish domain names from just any other name.
I'll give you an example: "BOOKS"
No one entity should get a monopoly on the name BOOKS. If you type BOOKS into your browser address bar; you should not be summarily redirected to whoever happened to get there first ---- logically, you would be presented search results based on relevance.
The authority system allows, there to be a BOOKS.COM under the Commercial registration authority... that might be a book store, Or an accounting vendor....
There can be a BOOKS.ORG, under the non-profit organization reg. authority ---- that might, for example, be a library-related organization.
Then there can be a BOOKS.EDU under the education reg. authority --- that domain might, for example, be an institution of higher learning that specializes in the library sciences or authorship/book writing.
Such domains a .INFO; were added later, and Don't really fit logically in the original DNS system.
Re:About the cost... (Score:5, Interesting)
It will. The business approach is obvious: First you set the price ridiculously high, to extract as much money as possible from those who must have their domain at any cost - businesses with trademarks to protect, mostly. But there are only so many of those, so once sales dry up you gradually lower the price to broaden the market. That way everyone pays exactly as much as they can be made to pay, maximising revenue.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's clear that ICANN wants to create a bunch of privately owned TLD registrars. Good or bad, they have been pushing that barrow for several years now. But the current scheme hides those registrars behind idiotic faux-generic TLDs as if they were the original .com .net .org .edu .gov .mil. I'm just saying that it's more honest if you want to allow companies to buy private TLDs, then use their actual names.
ICANN has this cringe against letting companies use their names as TLDs, but want a bunch of registrars running private TLDs. It's self-contradictory and results in the current stupidity.
If nobody challenges it, who would keep you from doing so?
$185,000 non-refundable application fee plus $1 million per year. Plus whatever additional rules ICANN wants to attach. This isn't intended for the average company. If it went beyond, say, a hundred company TLDs, I'd raise the annual fee until the number drops below that. If it was below 25 coTLDs, I'd reduce the fee until it rises.
Let me put it another way: Why should the island of Tuvalu be allowed to have a TLD, (actually leased to and run out of a ISP in Canada IIRC), but not Google? (Or rather why should a small ISP in Canada have the entirely for-profit .tv TLD, when Google/Apple/Microsoft/Yahoo/ATT/Amazon/etc can't?)
Or for that matter, why should Nauru, population 9000, but not California, population 38 million?