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Verisign Is Finally Bringing .web Domains To the Internet (nerds.xyz) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
BrianFagioli writes: Verisign is finally bringing web domains to the internet after a decade of fighting. Verisign says the .web top-level domain has finally been delegated into the DNS root, clearing the way for public registrations later in 2026. Until now, consumers could not buy normal working .web domains, despite the extension attracting a record $135 million winning bid in 2016. The launch could make .web one of the more recognizable alternatives to .com, but Verisign already operates both .com and .net, raising questions about whether this creates real competition or simply gives the dominant registry operator another valuable extension. The decade-long fight began after a company called Nu Dot Co won the rights to operate .web in a 2016 ICANN auction with a record $135 million bid secretly funded by Verisign. Rival bidder Afilias, which was later acquired by Donuts, challenged the sale, arguing ICANN should have investigated the relationship before allowing the auction. This triggered years of complaints, reviews, and legal disputes that have ultimately now been resolved under undisclosed terms.

Verisign Is Finally Bringing .web Domains To the Internet More | Reply

Verisign Is Finally Bringing .web Domains To the Internet

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  • Beat the rush: blacklist the entire TLD now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arrogant-Bastard ( 141720 ) on Thursday July 23, 2026 @07:21AM (#66252940)
    Like every other unneeded and unwanted TLD that's been introduced in the last decade-plus, this will be overrun by spammers and scammers within days. There will be millions (if not tens of millions) of domains registered, used once/burned, and discarded. Since even attempting to deal with these on a case-by-case is simply unworkable, a much better choice is to preemptively blacklist them all permanently and get on with doing something productive.

    • Not like .com, which is totally free of scammers and spammers... /s

      In this day and age of profuse TLDs, what's one more?

      Once nice thing about new TLDs is that newcomers can have a shot at a short domain name.

      When I was allowed to register a .me domain, I jumped at the chance to have my initials as a domain name.

      Though, there are still, today, systems that don't allow anything other than .com e-mail addresses, which is bonkers.

    • It sounds like you have a GO-DADDY problem.

  • www.slashdot.web (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Thursday July 23, 2026 @07:36AM (#66252952)
    Doesn't add anything to top-level domains (TLDs). I mean what's added in meaning for replacing shop.walmart.com with www.walmart.web.

  • The ship has already sailed as far as what the consumer cares about on TLDs - if they ever did. As another posted pointed out somewhere else on the thread - it only really gains general notice if it becomes a haven for bad actors - the "Watch out for .web addresses - it's full of scammers" type of problem.

  • Expanding TLDs was just about money anyway (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The only reason they ever expanded TLDs beyond the original .com/.net/.org etc was so that corporations would have yet another domain name they would have to pay the tax on every single year... business.com now has to have business.com/.biz/.xyz/.web/,etc instead of just dot com. It's all a scam and always was from the beginning.

    • but you don't want scammers to own bankofamerica.web

      • Re:but you don't want scammers to own bankofameric (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Thursday July 23, 2026 @09:51AM (#66253174) Homepage
        Which is why, as many people pointed out at the time the root servers were opened up to all these new gTLDs, that this is just a license for the successful registrars running each gTLD to print money at the expense of everyone with a brand they have to protect. In most cases, they were absolutely right on the money; .biz being the classic example, almost immediately becoming a wretched hive of online scum and villainy most mail server operators equally rapidly blocked outright. (I am curious though; does anyone actually try and host a legit .biz domain these days? I don't think I've ever come across one.)

        I'll give you, there are some pretty cool options for host/domain names under .web, especially with an arachnid theme or things like "web.web.web", that might become useful and popular for some groups, but apart from those - which Verisign, being Verisign, will no doubt have a special procurement process for to maximise their investment - the rest will almost certainly be parked/redirected brandname protection, a vast number of of scammer sites, and a handful of vanity projects that 99.99% of people probably won't even know about, and probably wouldn't care about if they did.

        None of which changes the fundamental point that we seldom care about URLs any more. We click on links in apps, webpages, emails, etc., ideally having done some kind of due diligence to make sure the link is hopefully OK, or just cut and paste from the browser bar to put it into something we are writing. Functionally, "bankofamerica.com" is no different from "bankofamerica.web", or any other gTLD/ccTLD they might care to suffix it with, and it wouldn't make any difference to their service if all the other TLDs went away, unless they wanted to do some kind of content localisation based on a ccTLD rather than some other approach to achieve that.

  • Two sides... (Score:3)

    by coofercat ( 719737 ) on Thursday July 23, 2026 @08:46AM (#66253048) Homepage Journal

    I'm a bit mixed about this, but mostly I think this is essentially .biz all over again - ie. a waste of everyone's time, and predominantly inhabited by spammers. I'd imagine most buyers of this domain will just use it for 'brand protection' and just redirect anything to it to their .com domain.

    However... as the .ai domain, and even .io domains show us, there are uses for different TLDs. Can .web be one of them? Personally, I doubt it, but we'll see...

    • What is the use of .io again? To denote that your company does business in the Indian Ocean territory?

      It's a fad that will go the way of .tv and .ly, we can only hope that the governments of their respective regions used their brief windfall wisely.

  • Do .www next (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday July 23, 2026 @09:17AM (#66253102)
    Then we can have palindromic domains and the browser confusion that would be www.www.www.

    • Then we can have palindromic domains and the browser confusion that would be www.www.www.

      I'll be the first to register www.IManAmRegalAGermanAmI.www.
      Followed by www.OozyRatInASanitaryZoo.www.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Yeah, I mean, who would call a website slash dot, because it then becomes w w w dot slash dot dot org....

    • Quick, how many dyslexics slashdotters can you phish with org.dotslash.www

    • I'd love if we'd confuse everyone by also creating a www TLD. Maybe also a http and https TLDs.

  • TLDs primarily exist to divide the DNS space into human-comprehensible chunks.

    I wish the original setup had been national TLDs run by the the nations they represented, then let them go Wild West.

    If your company is big enough to operate in multiple companies, it is big enough to have a domain for each country it operates in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      We have national TLDs. But .com, .net, etc. were created to support international organizations.

      On the other hand, .mil was created for the US DoD. And since that no longer exists (acording to .djt), can I get one for my local Airsoft club?

    • "national TLDs"

      That's just exchanging one set of disputes for another.

  • https://www.tautology.web.dns.internet (Score:3)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Thursday July 23, 2026 @09:33AM (#66253134)
    Do the people buying these domains live on Main Street Road, Town City ?

  • If I was rich, domains I would get list. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    join.the.web
    enter.the.web
    save.the.web
    fix.the.web
    own.the.web
    build.the.web
    search.the.web
    surf.the.web
    break.the.web
    rule.the.web
    better.web
    faster.web
    smarter.web
    cleaner.web
    simpler.web
    tiny.web
    giant.web
    local.web
    secret.web
    hidden.web
    weird.web
    cursed.web
    endless.web
    instant.web
    magic.web
    spider.web

  • I know GLWT, but this has to stop (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday July 23, 2026 @10:20AM (#66253216) Homepage Journal

    This triggered years of complaints, reviews, and legal disputes that have ultimately now been resolved under undisclosed terms.

    They suck a huge amount of money out of the court system and then We The People who paid for that don't even get to find out what the outcome was? The courts sure as fuck don't work for us.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      This.

      You brought your little pissing match to the court sysyem we pay for. We get to see the result. Even capital sentences are carried out with witnesses representing the public interest.

    • Did the courts consume a large amount of public money, or was it just lawyers consuming a large amount of private money?

  • Sigh. (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    You can keep your vanity plate names and waste all the money you want on them.

    Nobody cares any more. They just google or bookmark you.

  • Why (Score:2)

    by allo ( 1728082 )

    Almost as useless as sites on xyz domains.

    • I blocked all email from .xyz (and some other such TLDs) on our corporate systems as it was all spam.

      What was the point of an eXamine Your Zipper TLD in the first place?

  • ... be restricted to web pages?

    I have a .com domain now. Which has a place-holder web page. But there are a number of non-web client server applications using it (or subdomains thereof). I'll have to think through the ensuing possible confusions.

  • It seems ironic that all these people are complaining about a new TLD based on a story form nerds.xyz

    We'll know that ICAAN is desperate for money when they start offering .4eybxso8y1mpte TLDs for the scammers.

  • I don't think I've ever googled something and it came up with anything that wasn't .com, .org, .edu, or .gov. Are search engines, and now more importantly AI engines able to scour other domains for information?

    • Did you forget what century you are in? There are plenty of TLDs [wikipedia.org], more are added all the time. Anyone and anything (AI) can access them all!

      -more TLDs, for when spammers and scammers never actually ran out of places to hide.

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