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The Internet IT

ICANN Approves Two More Top-Level Domains 305

Posted by timothy from the what's-the-domain-kenneth dept.
Cpyder writes "ICANN has decided to go forward with the implementation of two new top level domains, namely .mobi (for mobile use, sponsored by Nokia and T-Mobile) and .jobs (for job sites). The ICANN Board meetings regarding the approval are available. It is not yet known when these domains will be available for registration, as this decision merely starts the technical and business negotiations for terms under which these domains will be registered. Normally the domains should become active somewhere next year. Several other new TLDs are still up for discussion. These include .asia, .mail, .tel and .xxx. Last October, ICANN approved .travel and .post. More on these new TLDs at PCWorld and Google News."
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ICANN Approves Two More Top-Level Domains More

ICANN Approves Two More Top-Level Domains

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  • Death of the . but Keywords live on (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slashnutt ( 807047 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:41AM (#11092596) Journal
    ICANN can give .* extensions and one day people are going to abandon that idea and start using AOL keywords type of scheme.

    Now we'll have whitehouse.gov - the real one, whitehouse.com - the sexy one, whitehouse.mobi - while Clinton was sleeping on the couch, whitehouse.sux - advocate site for the Whitehouse, whitehouse.net - no not Watergate, whitehouse.letsmakeanewdotextentiontomakemoremoney - An example of how the ICANN just makes up new dot names to generate more revenue as a businesses don't want customers to confuse extensions with a competing web squatter.

    Have you noticed that people have already ceased using www. on most advertisements? At least my domain the www is optional, as most other websites have adopted this too.
    • Never! The .but extension will never die!
    • The "www" prefix is pretty obsolete anyway, and hearkens back to an era when a given domain name likely represented a specific computer. Nowadays people typing in pointless prefixes probably costs the economy like a billion dollars a year.
    • ICANN can give .* extensions and one day people are going to abandon that idea and start using AOL keywords type of scheme.

      Yeah, its called Google [google.com]

    • ...that we need a top-level domain just for job sites is a little discouraging.

    • Have you noticed that people have already ceased using www. on most advertisements? At least my domain the www is optional, as most other websites have adopted this too.

      A lot of this drop has to do with the language. In Germany, I still hear "vay vay vay punkt irgendwas punkt day eh" where in the US, it takes about three weeks to stumble through "double-you double-you double-you dot something dot com". It's mostly because the professional speakers hate to pronounce the "w" incorrectly and sound like a

  • Steve? (Score:5, Funny)

    by martingunnarsson ( 590268 ) * <martin&snarl-up,com> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:41AM (#11092597) Homepage
    steve.jobs I say no more!
  • It seems that the i on the end of the domain looks a tad silly and won't do anything for assisting keypad typers who want to have to enter as little as possible! .mob looks much better than .mobi, and seeing as "i" is the third character under the number 4 that's an extra two keypresses per domain.

  • For Mobiles... (Score:3, Funny)

    by TarrVetus ( 597895 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:42AM (#11092614)
    ".mobi," in reference to the Mobius Strip [ctc.edu], representing the eternal stream of pop-up ads that will assault the cell users that try to access those sites.
    • And why, might I ask, would a domain space for mobile phones have a longer-than-usual text string. Not that .m is a good idea, but it's better than 6>66622444 for god's sake.

  • needs inforcement (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:43AM (#11092619)
    What is the point of these extra sites? Well .mobi makes since so mobile devices can talk to each other without filling up valuable .com domains or forcing calling a static IP Address. But for .jobs and the others. Nobody when they are looking for a job will try jobs.job they will still go to .com The only ways this can work properly is force people to use the correct Top-Level Domains. All Commercial Enterprise must use .com All Educational must use.EDU all job sites must use .jobs and not use .COM/.ORG That is the only way to get these to be useful, is to force proper use of top level domains. .COM is the standard for everything and that is what people will try.
    • The problem is that Monster.com is both a commercial enterprise and a job site. So which do you pick?

      My personal feeling is that everyone is still going to buy the .com version since that's what the masses think of for anything except schools...

      Although it would be ironic to make slashdot.org give up the .org.... of course they could just fall back to slashdot.com.
      • The problem is that Monster.com is both a commercial enterprise and a job site. So which do you pick?
        Monster.jobs of course!
        The practical reason why you would want more TLDs is to help people find stuff and offload the .COM TLD.
        To make this work you would have to stop using the .COM addresses for sites that should use the new TLDs.
        Problem: Lawyers will prevent that.
        Even the pr0n sites would want to keep their .COM addresses so that they can get customers where the .xxx TLD would be banned.

        The whole
    • About every year and a half, there is always an article in the tech news about new top level domains. And every time, I tune out and dismiss it as the same old crap (no, I did not bother to read this article). Sometimes, as an added bonus, some PHB will be interviewed by Forbes and will say something really stupid about the new domain opening up a "whole new era of ecommerce". Nobody gives a rat's ass about new TLDs. Everybody registering a URL wants a .com and will only take something else if the .com is n

    • Re:needs inforcement (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Spydr ( 90990 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:31AM (#11093181) Homepage
      Well .mobi makes since so mobile devices can talk to each other without filling up valuable .com domains or forcing calling a static IP Address.

      actually no..

      should we start making top level domains for every new device that comes out? that's not how the internet works... you have a user agent profile and user agent string that every device sends to your web server, and that is how that should be handled, not with a top level domain name.

      should there be .laptop and .newton or .automobile when my car gets a computer in it? maybe .toaster and .stove for my kitchen?

      the .mobi name is rediculous and completely useless, and will just end up costing businesses more money who want to control their brand names and now have to register more domain names to do so.
    • I run a site for myself. I don't have a company, so it's not .com, I'm not a non-profit so it's not .org, and it's not talking about a network of computers, so it's not .net. Under the orignal definitions of the domains, there isn't anything for individual users.

      Personally, I'm fine with a free-for-all on most TLDs. The only ones that seem to have been enforced, and thus seem worth keeping, are edu and mil.
      • there isn't anything for individual users
        That's what country codes are for.

        For USA: yoursite.[yourcounty].[yourstate].us

        Actually, now that they've opened up the US domain, you can go straight for [yoursite].us

        Plus, state/county subdomains are usually free (included in your tax dollars) for residents of that jurisdiction.

    • start forcing you Americans to use .com correctly... and those American commercial enterprises that don't qualify for .com should use .co.us It pisses me off to see so many perfectly good .com domains being used for little mom and pop companies that only serve there local area rather than having a worldwide presence...

  • .TLDs (Score:2)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) *
    Honestly, I steer completely clear of the "new" TLDs as they are mostly just redirects to the "standard" TLDs (.net/.com/.org) or they are blatant trash sites.

    To me this seems like nothing more than an attempt to make money revenue for all parties involved.
    • Honestly, I steer completely clear of the "new" TLDs as they are mostly just redirects to the "standard" TLDs (.net/.com/.org) or they are blatant trash sites.

      I'd have to agree here. For me, the URL "seems" more legit if it uses one of the standard TLDs or a country one (such as co.uk.) Then again, I pretty much have my set sites that I visit and don't venture outside of thosethat much.

  • I get mobi... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by terraformer ( 617565 ) <tpb@pervici.com> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:43AM (#11092622) Journal
    ...But why .jobs? That makes no sense as job sites are just commerce sites.
  • .mobi isn't a terrible idea. .jobs, though? I don't think that'll be used a lot. "Monster.jobs" doesn't have the same ring to it. There aren't zillions of job sites out there.
    • That's just it. Monster.com is the only jobsite anyone can remember. It's a plot to put Monster out of business since with the .jobs domain, all we need do is google for "uberlord site:*.jobs". this would put the general jobsites out of bizness.

  • For unemployed porn stars... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SoTuA ( 683507 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:44AM (#11092630)
    "www.blow.jobs"

  • .mobi? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by twofidyKidd ( 615722 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:44AM (#11092640)
    I guess they thought .mob just didn't have a friendly ring to it. And why are they getting longer? I tell you, in two years time, we'll be seeing .internetwebsite and .ecommerce. Idjits...

  • I still dont (Score:4, Insightful)

    by odano ( 735445 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:44AM (#11092648)
    I still dont think any companies are going to be giving up the .com website. It just has so much marketing built into it.

    I still lose credability for a site if it is .biz or some other imitiation. I am aware that this is just a subjective opinion, but I doubt I am the only one who feels this way, and I still think .com will never be touched as far as the most popular suffix.

  • Call me Ishmael ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:46AM (#11092668) Homepage
    Call me, Ishmael, using our new cell phone service, on the web at www.dick.mobi.

  • regular expression validation, (Score:3, Informative)

    by shawn(at)fsu ( 447153 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:48AM (#11092684) Homepage
    Alright all you web dev's, time to go in and add two more possible TLD's for validating email address ;)

  • Need a change... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by alexre1 ( 662339 )
    The whole idea of TLDs worked really well over the past few years, but I think its time for a fundamental change in internet addressing. If ICANN just keeps adding new TLDs, they'll accomplish nothing other than to confuse most consumers. Remembering .com/.net/.info/.biz/.mobi/.mail/... probably won't be an issue to most /. users, but I think the vast majority of internet users are going to start getting very confused, very fast.

    Maybe we can solicit an "Ask Slashdot" question about alternatives to the TL
  • somewhere next year

    Wait, do you mean light years?

  • Next up - .bob (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:53AM (#11092744) Homepage Journal
    And in keeping with the "terribly useless overly specific domains that nobody needs", the next domains ICANN'T will be announcing are:
    .bob
    for people named Bob
    .troll
    For 99% of the /. readership's homepage
    .linkfarm
    For Googlewhacking
    .lefty
    For left-handed people's web pages
    .cheese
    For cheese-related sites

  • WHY? WHY? WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:53AM (#11092748) Homepage Journal
    It's obvious anyone at ICANN ever heard of balanced trees and binary searches. If you want to create a useful TLD, figure out what half the current .com domains have in common and make something that relates to that (maybe that's what .xxx is for?). .jobs clearly does not achieve that goal.

    I can think of dice.jobs, guru.jobs, and hot.jobs and not a whole lot else. What does that do to effectively partition the .com uber-TLD?

  • TLDs are Losing Their Meaning (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Seanasy ( 21730 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @10:58AM (#11092802)

    There was time when TLD meant something. You knew a .com was a company, a .org was a non-profit, a .net was service provider etc. Now a .org or .net can be any old profit-driven site selling anything. All these new TLDs are just pointless. .mobi?

    And they're not domains anymore. They're vanity plates. A domain used to mean a bunch of computers that were connected and administered as a group. Now, it's a website.

    I'm afraid it's just going to get more confusing.

    • Expanded TLDs already meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:26AM (#11093120)
      The bulk of userspace never knew what .com, .net, and .org meant and still don't. All they ever knew was that the web site address wasn't complete unless it ended in one of those names, and usually just .com (kind of like they had to start with www. as well). The average user doesn't know what the new TLDs are and doesn't care, since nothing's leaving the big three.

      The intended purpose of expanding the namespace by adding new TLDs is both not necessary with the death of squatting and speculating as well as testy trademark holders lining up to register their names in any possible new TLDs, thus creating a scarcity in "good" 2nd level domain names in any new general purpose TLDs anyway.

      And its not like there are a bunch of organizations suddenly willing to abandon 2LD in "the big three" for a new TLD in something nobody knows or understands; at best they might register their existing 2LD in the new TLD if it was 100% spot-on accurate (eg, monster.jobs, for example).

      Nor are there a bunch of organizations saying "Gee, we have TLD that kind of matches our organization, maybe it's time to get on the intranets."

      The only reason I can see ICANN releasing new TLDs is to raise money by selling the "management rights" to a bunch of Verisign wannabees, who if they have any brains, will just sell out to Verisign's monopoly as soon as they can.

      But this strategy will only work a few more times for ICANN, because soon Verisign won't be interested in buying complete control of TLDs by proxy once the market is diluted enough.

    • There was time when TLD meant something. You knew a .com was a company, a .org was a non-profit,...

      I have never understood this claim. RFC 1032 [faqs.org] defined the ORG TLD in this way:

      "ORG" exists as a parent to subdomains that do not clearly fall within the other top-level domains. This may include technical- support groups, professional societies, or similar organizations.

      Is there something else that designated the .org TLD as reserved for non-profit purposes?

      • I have never understood this claim. RFC 1032 defined the ORG TLD in this way:
        "ORG" exists as a parent to subdomains that do not clearly fall within the other top-level domains. This may include technical- support groups, professional societies, or similar organizations.
        Is there something else that designated the .org TLD as reserved for non-profit purposes?

        Simple... because if you were there to generate profit you were a commercial entity as defined by the .com domain definition and should have put your
    • I agree that the new TLD's are stupid and meaningless, but that concept of 'domain' is something entirely different, and had nothing to do with Internet DNS.
  • so when will we start seeing links to http://goatse.xxx [goatse.xxx]?

    PCB32

  • OpenNIC (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kidbro ( 80868 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:09AM (#11092902)
    Yeah, I'm off topic, but any story about ICANN's nonsense is a good place to post a link to OpenNIC [unrated.net].
    • It doesn't seem like a very serious effort...


      .fur's purpose in life, quite simply, is to bring a unique identity to furry fans across the internet.

      wtf?

  • ... to register hand. and blow.?
  • What's wrong with .mobile instead of .mobi I wonder? (Assuming we need such a TLD at all.) Reminds me of old DOS 8.3 days when you couldn't say filename.text without the OS falling down dead!

    .mobi is almost as juvenile as .biz , a TLD that no self-respecting business with any class would dream of using. (It is very useful in SPAM-filters, tho, along with .info and .ws ...)


  • These include .asia, .mail...

    Which is just a lead-in for the quietly planned .spam domain for asian "email service providers".

  • Classic classification mistake (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ngunton ( 460215 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:30AM (#11093173) Homepage
    This attempt to "classify" website types more precisely using the TLD is a big mistake, because all classification schemes are fundamentally flawed. Whatever taxonomy you try to come up with, there will always be other ways to look at it, exceptions and other things that just don't "fit". For example, what if I have a website that has some jobs on it, and other classifieds, but isn't dedicated to jobs? Do I get the .com or the .jobs? Oh, I get it, I am supposed to just buy all the applicable domains (and, presumably, confuse my customers with a multitude of possible web addresses).

    Having the top level domain suffix be so specific is just a horribly simplistic way of trying to classify websites. Also, why can't they realize that the website owners themselves don't really want it. It just multiplies the number of domains you have to register in order to prevent confusion and squatters.

    If they want to fix something real, then how about the problem of all those domain names out there that have been registered simply to display a stupid "search page", with a message saying "this domain is for sale". I seem to remember in the early 1990's that if you didn't use a domain for a "valid purpose" then it simply got returned to the pool. It irritates me no end to think of a domain and check its availability, only to find some asshat registered it for no purpose but to sit on it and hope to squeeze some money out of someone who really wants to use it.

    If we were to free up all THOSE domains then that would be a helluva lot more useful to the internet than new TLDs. And isn't ICAAN sposed to be looking after the interests of the internet, rather than simply representing business interests?
  • Yay, even more redundancy. Just what the domain name system needed... for even more confusion and costs for those who wish to register, and work for domain nappers.

    Is there any research being done to replace this mess with something better, maybe a 1:1 system for domain names, which would make things tidy again? Some other domain "format" / system?

    With the system of today, IMHO even .com should be controlled to only allow international commercial sites, .net for networks, and so on. What's the point if th
  • ..so everybody should have some!

  • VC phone home (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:44AM (#11093341) Homepage Journal
    " sponsored by Nokia and T-Mobile"

    What the hell is ICANN doing endorsing two private companies in the root domain servers? Is the control of mobile devices now to be defined by these two partnering competitors in the vastly important mobile communications industry, on behalf of the global public supposedly served by ICANN? Now we see why it takes ICANN so long to approve domains: telcos take time to complete their bribe negotiations with such a distributed organization of crooks as ICANN. Maybe I can bootstrap a deal with Larry Flynt to buy control of .xxx , and deprioritize lookups for penthouse.xxx . At least Larry's got a sense of humor, and tasty perks - these telcos are just about the cold, hard cash.
  • This is simply a make work program for all those in the domain registration business. I don't think it will make life any easier for users. Everyone who has already spent money buying the all the tlds for their tradename to sit in front of will just have to go and buy a few more. Domain names are just cheap enough and trademarks are valuable enough that most tradename owners will pay this tax.
  • .stupid would be great, the we wouldn't need all these other extra domains. The entire .biz nameset could be ported to .stupid... of course, nobody would notice.
  • What do they need .asia for? What about the other parts of the world? There's .eu, but that's for the European Union, a political entity.
    • Right. We don't need .asia, we already have: .jp .cn .kr .kp .my .tw .sg .th

      and such. These idiots are just trying to push through "hot new domain names" to sell to chumps during the next "huge internet landgrab."
  • Then we can just have ISPs drop all packets from the relevant IPs and the rest of us can go on without having stupid anti-terror laws dragged over our heads.
  • I think .mobi may actually be the first "useful" domain I've heard so far. If you're on your cell phone and want to be sure that the web site you want to access will be tailored to your needs with a mobile browser, just ensure it is a .mobi domain. I suppose it's just as easy to add "mobile." to the beginning of your site for a mobile compatible page, but this BORDERS on useful.

    All the other ones (.biz? .jobs?) are so specific, useless, and already have way too large a base in the .com world that they

    • I think .mobi may actually be the first "useful" domain I've heard so far. If you're on your cell phone and want to be sure that the web site you want to access will be tailored to your needs with a mobile browser, just ensure it is a .mobi domain. I suppose it's just as easy to add "mobile." to the beginning of your site for a mobile compatible page, but this BORDERS on useful.

      Imagine a world where every device has its own TLD. Your mobile phone browses only in .mobi, your laptop only in .laptop, you

  • It's time to simply revamp the entire naming system. With IT being what it is, there's no reason large corporations shouldn't control their own TLD the same way they control their current .com addresses.

    If Sony wants everything to be .sony, like playstation.sony or tv.sony or music.sony, then Sony runs the root for .sony and has at it. Of course, the problem with doing that is that there's no automated way (right now) to deal with an enormous splurge in TLDs. But it's not an insurmountable task and coul
  • Once upon a time there as a reason for .gov but that time has long since past. Unless the US Govt plans on being the government of the world ICANN needs end the .gov domain. Is there a legitimate reason for keeping it?

    While adding domains let's remove this one.

  • Every time I read something like this, my first thought is: how long before we need to add a new top layer to organize them all, so one can figure out what to ask for?

    My second thought: eh, how would that help? It's just a mess anyway.

    My third: forget trying to figure it all out, and go with a Query By Example style a la X.500. Tell the system everything you know and let it give you a list of "probables".

    Right now, if the name isn't instantly obvious, I just look up the entity on AltaVista and wade

  • TLDs to remove (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @02:11PM (#11095280) Homepage
    We need to get rid of some TLDs.
    • .gov Migrate to .gov.us
    • .mil Migrate to .mil.us
    • .museum Remove due to underutilization. [index.museum]
    • .biz Slum clearance.

    If ".biz" is kept, the registration requirements for ".com" should be tightened, so that to get into ".com", you have to have a corporation, a DUNS number, or a business license, with that data in WHOIS. Then the slimeballs can be migrated to ".biz".

  • .com, .scr, .exe, .vbs (Score:3, Informative)

    by IchBinEinPenguin ( 589252 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @06:54PM (#11098473)
    the similarity between the .com domain and the .com executable has been exploited in recent email-worms.

    At the rate TLD's are being added how long before more such problems arise?
    How long before users simply click on this stuff, assuming that .url [mit.edu] is simple another TLD?

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