ICANN opening up the internet and why some don’t get it

Posted by Scott on June 24th, 2008 .

What a load of rubbish there has been posting around the net over the last day or so about the proposed opening up of the domain space, in case you are unaware ICANN are in the later stages of opening up top level domains which have been restricted to mainly .com .net and geo countries like .UK

The new proposal would allow anyone to submit their own subject to a stringent vetting process, so you could have .love or .hate

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7468855.stm

Individuals will be able to register a domain based on their own name, or any other string of letters, as long as they can show a “business plan and technical capacity”.

While companies will be able to secure domain names based on their intellectual property easily, some domain names could become subject to contention and a bidding war.

Dr Twomey said: “If there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest bidder.”

There are numerous threads on the main domaining forums which for a large part totally miss the point, perhaps it is to be expected, domainers are not exactly going to be in favour of opening up the internet and many are saying it will increase the branding and desirability of .co.uk & .com which I agree with but saying that this new opening up of domains will fail is a bit short sighted.

You can catch some of the discussions here:
Namepros
Acorn
DNForum
DNState

Would Apple or Coke give up apple.com or coke.com?
Of course not, but surely you can see that if your a Mac fan and either free as a promotion or for a low yearly fee you could have yourname.mac as a domain for a website & email that would be attractive, just like Ebay and many other large companies would want to own their own domain extension.

It’s pointless, spammers and squatters will just dilute the masses of new tld’s
It has been stated that there is a strict vetting process, trademarks will be protected and more then that you need to demonstrate the ability to run a domain extension and show a business plan, there is also the likelihood of a large up front fee which could be tens of thousands so that clearly puts it out of reach of the average spammer, you need a clear business plan and a large wallet to pull it off.

There are already other extensions and they have failed like .biz  .eu
Granted there are a lot of poor extensions that have had varying success but this to me looks like an excellent opportunity for the right people with the right business plan.

Imagine owning .insurance

car.insurance / auto.insurance
home.insurance
pet.insurance
buildings.insurance
contens.insurance

Some high value domains there, or go for the wider audience with .hotel
How many hotels are there in the world?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 and is filed under Domains, Miscellaneous . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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14 Comments »

Comment by Stephen from uk sites Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-24 11:25:37

Hi Scott,
So do I get it or not? :)
The opening up of the root zone has been on the cards for a few years, bit certainly not a free-for-all. I agree on some points. Some of the first approved new tld’s will be closed corporate only. What a way to stop spam, by only allowing user@bigcompanyname through the email filters! And as promotional tools such as user@mac & http://www.user.mac

I don’t see any landrush though.

S

 
Comment by Scott from Scott
2008-06-24 11:35:17

No landrush I agree, the promotional aspect has huge potential, as it opens up I feel a few large players will compete for some of the premium domains and some will be very successful if marketed right and they’ll make a lot of money from this as will ICANN of course. I think a lot of people saying it will fail are in fear of protecting their own assets/interests.

 
Comment by Patrick Altoft from BlogStorm Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-24 12:28:21

I wouldn’t ever bother to type them anyway, just use google.

Patrick Altoft’s last blog post..Behind the Scenes at FT.com

Comment by Robbert from informationeel.nl Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-24 14:54:26

And give Google more search queries, so they bring in even more money ;) I would like to have some new tld’s though :-)

Robbert’s last blog post..Over de autoverzekering

 
 
Comment by bharath
2008-06-24 16:47:49

Its been some time (more than a year) I have typed in .com or .co.uk directly.

I remember typing google.com or google.co.uk or google.de.

What matters in not the number of extentions but what extentions google will give preference to.

 
Comment by Scott from Scott
2008-06-24 16:58:24

I don’t see it being about search, I see it being about opening up the adress system with a business plan to sell your own domains to those who are happy to pay reg fee but not 3,4,5 or 6 figures creating new identities.

 
Comment by Mally from Petition Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-25 05:51:20

Sounds like hard work to me. I’ve never understood though how some websites can even have only 2 letters in there domain name, i.e cj.com and lv.com

they must be super valued?

Comment by Scott from Scott
2008-06-25 08:29:24

letter letter.com’s are generally worth $75,000 and upwards just due to their rarity from what I have seen, I almost managed to buy one for $10,000 early this year as well, really close argh!!

 
 
Comment by Amit Bhawani from Tech Blog
2008-06-25 16:18:03

.Hotels would build into a billion $ industry if it would be allowed, but its definately a wrong choice to start offering .tld to everyone.

 
Comment by Justin Cook from SEO Toronto Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-27 13:23:04

Can you get a lock on a particular extension, like a country can do now? As in, could I reserve .Cook? Or .toronto?

Comment by Scott from Scott
2008-06-27 13:26:39

Yes you could apply for either of those, chances are you would need 6 figures just to buy the rights to use it from ICANN though Justin.

Comment by Justin Cook from SEO Toronto Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-27 13:27:57

Oh, ok. So, just because they can be used, it doesn’t mean you can just hop over to godaddy and register justin.cook for $7 then.

(Comments wont nest below this level)
 
 
Comment by Delacourt Subscribed to comments via email
2008-06-27 16:21:54

essentially yes you can register justin.cook at godaddy if they happen to own .cook or the rights to sell domains.cook to the public from the .cook tld owner

what they are saying here is you are able to purchase .cook in its entirety

 
 
Comment by Pet Doctor
2008-11-07 22:03:19

While I think it would be cool to have my own TLD, I think that this is just another money grab by ICANN. I seek it opening a firestorm of ridiculous lawsuits too as people start registering their names and companies try and take them away.

 
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