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The Internet Technology

Startup Applies For 307 GTLDs 239

Posted by Soulskill from the evolution-of-squatters dept.
itwbennett writes "Startup Donuts has set its sights on being a domain-name registry. With $100 million in venture capital in its pocket, Donuts has applied for 307 of the most generic of generic top-level domains. The new domains will be targeted toward specific services, said Jon Nevett, a cofounder and vice president of corporate affairs at Donuts. For example, the .tickets domain would be where Web users could expect to go to buy event tickets. 'There will be more names geared toward what consumers are looking for,' Nevett said."
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Startup Applies For 307 GTLDs More

Startup Applies For 307 GTLDs

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:37PM (#40226341)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:A records (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:40PM (#40226365)

      No. The best website for selling tickets should be tickets.tickets.tickets

    • That is too much non-specific not enough cash being paid to me.

      Now you'll be going to domain.tickets for your ticketing needs.

      In your example the user would need to know which domain to go to while in the new paradigm the user will only need to know what domain to go to. Much more efficient. Particularly since I did not have the funding/foresight to buy tickets.com when it was available.

      On a less ridiculous note, I can see the ".web" gTLD but the others are just STUPID. .vodka ? .restaurant ? .doctor ?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        as much as i misspell...
        shouldn;t they make it like .tix or something?

      • That is too much non-specific not enough cash being paid to me.

        Now you'll be going to domain.tickets for your ticketing needs.

        In your example the user would need to know which domain to go to while in the new paradigm the user will only need to know what domain to go to. Much more efficient.

        you are joking, right? User and knowledge? thats what Google is for.

      • On a less ridiculous note, I can see the ".web" gTLD

        How is that less ridiculous? Who uses the Internet and doesn't associate http:// with the WWW already???

        On a more ridiculous note, maybe now someone can finally get cracking on a web presence for Dillon Edwards Investments [clownpenis.fart].

    • tickets.domain.com

      Next?

      I could see, maybe, why some people would want this, but $100,000,000 worth? No, never happen, this will never make $100,000,000 in profits.

      And it's owned by Paul Stahura who started eNom in 1997, so why did he need $100 million? [itworld.com] Is eNom not going that great?

      Ultimately it does not matter your domain, what matters is if people can find your website when they search for it, so really Google, Bing and Yahoo are important, not the domain name. It's not 1997 anymore, you don't need to say "go to blahbla

      • Is eNom not going that great?

        It matters not when youre a sleaze and can sucker some VCs out of $100mil, you set your salary at $500k/yr, ride the avalanche for a couple years, easy $1mil...

    • Such quaint, outdated, old-fashioned thinking.

      I mean, just look at this. How does it leverage our investment in the cloud? How will it empower the core business? Where's the synergy with our customer expectations?..

      See, you can't even answer basic questions like that. That's because you can't even envision the value-add that diversity brings to the table. We've got to think out of the box!

  • AOL Keywords (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris@[ ]u.org ['bea' in gap]> on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:38PM (#40226349)

    Everything old comes back it seems. Why does this look exactly like AOL Keywords reborn?

    We know nobody will be bothering registering subdomains on these turds. It will just be 'tickets' resold to the highest bidder.

    • Re:AOL Keywords (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DanTheManMS ( 1039636 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:47PM (#40226451)
      Sadly, we already have AOL Keywords reborn. It's "Go to Facebook.com/AOL_Keyword_Here for more details!"

    • Re:AOL Keywords (Score:4, Insightful)

      by snowraver1 ( 1052510 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @06:34PM (#40226917)
      The parent comment is not funny - Its insightful.

      I think it's a stupid idea as much as the next poster here, but I really think this is going to play a part in the future. Imagine typing only "google" into the address bar and getting google. Tickets could take you to ticketmaster. It won't be ticketmaster.tickets, it will just be tickets, with a recirect to ticketmaster.com. It's like taking out the www. "www.google.com" becomes "google.com" becomes "google". It also is "exclusive". The barrier to entry is rather high for a non-large organization (100K + yearly fees IIRC, which I may not) It would create a divide between the haves and have nots. The havenots get stuck with putting .com or .net or whatever behind their names.

      The parent nailed it though. Keywords are back baby!

      • Imagine typing only "google" into the address bar and getting google.

        Even better: try it! I've seen too many people access Google via IE/Bing this way.

        Between integrated search, bookmarks and Facebook pages these "exclusive" domain names are already rather redundant. Users will hit Google first when searching for something, they're used to it.

        How will Ticketmaster inform users they can simply enter 'tickets' into their addressbar? "Shouldn't there be a .com behind that?" At least with 'tickets.com' it's cle

        • Yes, you can type google in the address bar, wait for DNS to timeout, be presented with a google search for google, and then click google.

          How will they inform people? Oh I don't know? TV? Website adds? use your imagination. What does .com even mean to most people. It's just something to put after whatever you want to find on the internet. They don't know, or care, why a .com is at the end. Also, I assume that these TLDs would have good google pagerank, so maybe that alone is worth hopping on the bandw

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 1u3hr ( 530656 )

        Imagine typing only "google" into the address bar and getting google.

        "Imagine"? With most browsers, that's what you get now.

      • Imagine typing only "google" into the address bar and getting google.

        Add a pause before hitting enter, and you basically have Chrome.

    • Why does this look exactly like AOL Keywords reborn?

      Uh, it doesn't?

      This isn't 'tickets', it's e.g. van-halen.tickets/boston

      Fire up your 302's.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      We know nobody will be bothering registering subdomains on these turds.

      Fine then... I call dibs on SPEEDING.TICKETS

  • List? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:39PM (#40226357)
    Is there a list of the 307 gTLD's? Isn't this story less than complete without it?

    • Re:List? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by D'Sphitz ( 699604 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @11:44PM (#40229077) Journal

      After looking through the list [newgtldsite.com] I am surprised at how few of them caught my eye. At $185k a pop I thought, wrongly, that the list would be of a bit higher quality than your typical domain name goldrush when a new tld is released, but I'm not sure there are really any on that list that I would consider registering a domain with. The only ones I wouldn't mind are .web and .tech, but I'm rather indifferent when we've always had a tld (.net) that encompasses both of those.

      Many just don't sound right, like .dog, the only domain names I can come up with that don't sound ridiculous followed by "dot dog" are generic types of dogs, like sheep.dog or hunting.dog, and even then the singular doesn't make any sense, hunting.dogs sounds much better. .sport is another WTF, whoever ends up with blood.sport may be content, but there's nothing after that. And .website is great for those times when you don't know if the website you're on is a website.

      .sex and .porn were entirely predictable, and I have no doubt that .rocks and .sucks sites will soon plague us all, but I think .inc and .llc are maybe the biggest winners so far, as a .com alternative they should rake in big bucks, but it makes me wonder why we didn't have these 20 years ago.

      I wish they whould have restricted it to 4 chars max, maybe even 3, the majority of this is more .travel and .museum tlds that will be about as successful.

      My biggest surprise is that the two things I most expected to happen did not, at least not yet. I thought for sure that the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL at a minimum would be the first in line. It seems like a natural fit to have yankees.mlb, patriots.nfl, etc, it looks like .MLS is the only one so far. And that there would be some common file extensions registered like .txt, .exe, .ttf, .pdf, .zip, and seriously no .mp3 ?

      And still no indication of a clownpenis.fart any time soon...

  • Can we short them yet? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xugumad ( 39311 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:42PM (#40226399)

    > For example, the .tickets domain would be where Web users could expect to go to buy event tickets.

    I regularly start with a TLD and work backwards when I'm looking for things, rather than searching Google...

    *facepalm*

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      You can search in specific domains on Google.

    • Re:Can we short them yet? (Score:4, Funny)

      by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @06:13PM (#40226721)

      > For example, the .tickets domain would be where Web users could expect to go to buy event tickets.

      I regularly start with a TLD and work backwards when I'm looking for things, rather than searching Google...

      *facepalm*

      You're in luck! Google registered the .google TLD so you can start your Google search by using the TLD!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        registering .Schadenfreude

      • That actually would be interesting, if they owned the tld then a address bar search could work like: "free screensavers -virus.google" and the browser would take care of the %20s and all that.

        I still think all these generic tlds are pointless for the end user and only serves to make money for icann and any of these companies trying to become registrars.

        The original com/net/org domains just made so much more sense. They were short, and even if their original meaning was mostly lost to the public at large (be

    • I regularly start with a TLD and work backwards when I'm looking for things, rather than searching Google...

      And where would you start?
      tickets.tickets?
      search.tickets?
      help.tickets?

    • Re:Can we short them yet? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hairyfish ( 1653411 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @08:59PM (#40228077)

      I regularly start with a TLD and work backwards when I'm looking for things, rather than searching Google...

      *facepalm*

      Yeah I never really understood the logic here. The best site for searching isn't search.com, the best site for porn isn't porn.com, the best site for buying books isn't books.com, and we all know the best social networking site isn't socialnetwork.com. In fact I'm struggling to think of even one case where the name of a TLD actually is the best site in it's category? I don't understand why anyone would pay a premium for a TLD when it is demonstrated to make no difference to the success of your site?

  • No one memorizes domains anymore (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mitreya ( 579078 ) <mitreya.gmail@com> on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:43PM (#40226403)
    People use google or another search engine.
    I've seen less-computer-literate people type in the entire URL into google (e.g. open google, and type in cnn.com/search to go to CNN's website)

  • What an evil, scummy corporation. BS on "startup." This a bunch of back room money men.

  • Wasn't this supposed to be for trademarked brands? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Khopesh ( 112447 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:47PM (#40226457) Homepage Journal

    I really hope they revise this back to its original intent of corporate brands rather than generics.
    Then again, one could argue that domains have become brands rather than the other way around, e.g. "flowers.com," which has no meaning without the TLD, so I suppose you could indeed have DotFlowers for the *.flowers TLD.
    Wow, this is messy.

    • I think it is supposed to be for trademarked brands... and for whomever can pony up the $100k+ for a generic TLD, after ICANN has extorted those fees from the trademarked brand owners.
    • Alright, fine, trademarked in WHICH COUNTRY?!? With the old system (us owns com net gov & org, canada owns ca, france owns fr, etc it was very easy to decide which trademarks qualified). How are you going to enforce that on an INTERNATIONAL basis?!?

  • Specific TLDs = Phisher's paradise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:48PM (#40226465)
    The more TLDs we create, the more opportunities there are for Phishers. For example, let's say there is a hypothetical TLD for .bank . And so someone registers Bankofamerica.bank as a phishing site. Well, lets say there is another one that is .finance, etc. So now as a precaution if you are Bank of America you have to register bankofamerica.com, .org, .net, .us, .bank, .finance, etc. all to redirect to your main site to stop phishers. Now then you've got to worry about typos... etc.

    What's wrong with just having .org, .net, .com, a handful of others and then country coded ones?

    • Exactly. It's not as if diversity of TLDs allows for diversity of offerings. Do you think there's competition from Google.com at Google.net or Google.info? Or (would be) at Google.search? No! The same companies are going to register the same fucking names on all TLDs. Smaller players are (possibly) going to quibble over who has rights to a given name across all TLDs, and any established company will get handed the rights to their names. In other words, this is all a bunch of hand-waving, and nothing

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        i am sorry can we go back to using ip addresses instead of this confusing stuff... preferably IPv6

    • I've never really been clear on the need for TLDs in the first place. Why wouldn't I want to just go to http://tech.slashdot/story/ [tech.slashdot] or http://google/ [google] or http://whitehouse/ [whitehouse] ? What use does slapping a ".com" (or at random, ".org" instead) on the end really have?
      • I think that TLDs are a good idea in theory because there might be 2 (or more) sites with the same generic name.

        For example, lets say there is McDonalds (the fast food joint), McDonalds (a farm) and McDonalds (a family tree website for people with the last name of McDonalds) so McDonalds the fast food might be McDonalds.com, McDonalds the farm might be McDonalds.us and McDonalds the family tree might be McDonalds.org. Otherwise you end up with stupidly long domain names (McDonaldsRestaraunt, McDonaldsFa
      • Because then internal domain names would be nearly impossble to manage. Before this "TLD's for everyone" bullshit, you could safely name all your machines after LOTR characters, or greek gods or episodes of Futurama, but now you just may be overriding the "tld" of an ACTUAL website.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sdnoob ( 917382 )

      that is exactly why some registries and registry-wannabes pushed so hard for this crap (and why they've done the same for all the other extra TLDs like biz, info, travel, coop and xxx)... to get companies to register their names already existing names again and again. it's a money grab, plain and simple.

      i will not participate in the complete and utter nonsense that is these custom TLDs. i'll stick with the traditional rules for TLD selection (COM = businesses, ORG = organizations, NET = network/internet ser

    • Well, if this company (startup) will take some responsibility for what it registers, than this can be a good thing. In your example, they would need to prove that they are bank and that they own bankofamerica trademark. Cert is complementary.

      Not sure if this is good business though

  • I could see the point of this in '96-'97. Now, not so much.

    • I can't see the point at all. It's like everyone competing over a worthless chunk of land. Search engines have made domain names nearly worthless. Who the fuck cares what the domain name is?

      • Who the fuck cares what the domain name is?

        Spammers and phishers and people trying to make a quick dollar off of renting room on the gTLD used by spammers and phishers.

        Do you think whomever owns .bank will be able to tell a "real" bank from a phisher?

        Or that they will even care after the real banks start informing their customers that they do NOT have a YourBankName.bank domain and not to trust anything claiming to be from them from that gTLD.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's like everyone competing over a worthless chunk of land.

        We go to gain a little patch of ground
        That hath in it no profit but the name.
        To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it ...
        This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
        That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
        Why the man dies.

            - Hamlet, IV, iv

      • Except that the scarcity is 100% artificial.

  • The more of these garbage TLDs are registered, the more valuable becomes .com.

  • There will be more names geared toward what consumers are looking for,' Nevett said.

    Fetish

  • Dot Com Bubble 2.0 - pets.pets (Score:3)

    by CriminalNerd ( 882826 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @05:59PM (#40226575)

    Am I the only one who thinks that this GTLD craze is going a little bit too far? (Along with the repetitive coverage on Slashdot telling us every day how many applications there were)

    Soon, people everywhere are going to have a tough time trying to remember if their favourite cat website's URL was whether slashdot.cat, slashdot.cats, slashdot.kitty, slashdot.kitten, etc. and whether they should go to slashdot.pets, slashdot.pound, slashdot.rescue, or slashdot.shelter to find a new animal to bring into their home.

    I'm (mostly) kidding but I'm getting the same headache I usually get when somebody tries to explain to me how I should "refactor a system to be completely object-oriented because it's better".

    Probably going to be just another craze that'll blow over after a couple years and everybody will go back to using the "old" TLDs like .com, .org, .net, because they "look more legitimate" (or because they're too cheap/lazy).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nwf ( 25607 )

      You aren't the only one. This is less useful than about any other option. I'll basically set my email servers to block receiving email from anything other than .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and the country two letter codes. That's all I care about.

      I've been on the internet since the 80s (yes, pre-www) and I never even thought of trying to type "foo.bank" or something lame. If we had a reputable organization come up with some good TLDs and then actually ENFORCE access to them, I'd be open to that. As it is,

  • I don't understand why they are doing this at all. It seems to me that this will just lead to people faking websites for malware purposes. Like: www.Microsoft.update etc... Since I could just have www.any_god_damned_thing_I_Want_I_dont_see_the_reason_for_this_at_All.com

  • .con (Score:2)

    by Rary ( 566291 )

    Just wait until someone implements ".con", the pure phishing TLD. "Click here [www.microsoft.con] to get your latest Windows update!"

    • .corn looks more passable, although I do appreciate the irony behind the "con" of it all.

      • The real value of .con would not be that it looks so similar to .com, but that it's so easy to mistype .com that way.

        Besides, with a website under .con, they can always say that they warned people upfront. ~

    • .corn might even be better. Harder to visually distinguish, and even more likely to have legitimate uses.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JazzLad ( 935151 )
      I want .cmo - imagine the typo-squatting you could do with that!

  • Squatters. As if no one expected this.

    I expect extortion for 'adult' TLDs that sound similar to commercial sites. ( like google.sex or something )

  • Doesn't this all remind us at the CompuServe times where typing just one word was enough to do exactly what is being sold now at a much higher price?

  • slash slash slash dot dot dot (Score:5, Funny)

    by countach ( 534280 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @06:56PM (#40227153)

    What about the long time dream of this web site to have a .DOT domain? So that we can have:

    http: slash slash slash dot dot dot

    ( http://slashdot.dot/ [slashdot.dot] )

  • your partents must be proud that the best you can do is extort future businesses

  • How do GTLDs work when on a private network? (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @07:20PM (#40227399)

    Can someone explain to me how GTLDs are actually supposed to work? We now have word of some 307 generic names being purchased. So what do I do to visit a TLD? Do I go to http://tickets/ [tickets] ? So what happens if someone now decides to buy a GTLD that has the same name as a computer on my network?

    (Yes I know this is slashdot and I should have fully qualified domain names for all my PCs but I don't)

    The average home network still uses NetBIOS names for home networking. So today we have .tickets what happens when tomorrow someone registers .firewall? They will be unreachable by typing their GTLD into the browser? As in will http://firewall/ [firewall] point to the computer called firewall, and then http://www.firewall/ [www.firewall] point to the website with too much money to spare?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Can someone explain to me how GTLDs are actually supposed to work?

      It's http://tickets./ [tickets.] with a dot at the end.

      Otherwise DNS qualification rules for dotless names apply. http://tickets/ [tickets] refers to (TICKETS).(YOURLOCALDOMAIN).

      Also, Host records except nameservers aren't allowed in the root zone.

  • When did this stop being sleazy? (Score:3)

    by geekprime ( 969454 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2012 @09:36PM (#40228325)

    From the article,
    "We'd be increasing the real estate on the Internet," Nevett said. "We think they're good, generic terms that will give consumers more choice and benefits."

    Um, snapping up domain names to sell at a premium to someone else later is not "increasing" anything, it's a land grab in hopes that the "land" grabbed will sell for more than it cost.
    When did this sort of behavior become a legitimate business plan instead of just being a sleazy attempt to squeeze money out of people that DO have business plans?

  • More cost, less benefit. That's going to get us out of recessoin!

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