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iana.org

This is a crazy list. Great to see it all in one place though. I don't pay that much attention to the domain registration space any more, but has the explosion of TLDs achieved the goal of reducing .com cash runs?

It certainly seems like other TLDs have reached a level of acceptance, but my experience is not reflective of the majority of users.

Also, it's crazy to see TLDs with other languages. Very cool, and not surprising at all, but I've never seen that before.

.com is still king. It's going to be a while until the others get real penetration. And some tld's are never going to take off. Either the pricing is completely unrealistic or the tld is so long you can achieve the same thing in a shorter tld.

Looking at you, yes you... .international

To me, the asinine part of these gTLDs is that companies can register their gTLD with sponsorship ($185K from when I last checked) yet they don't need to sell domains to the public. I understand the idea of exclusivity, but this simply shifts the profiteering racket from one set of players (domain squatters) to another (ICANN and big business).

I'm not happy with how they are doing it. I'd rather a business model be required to sell domains at $X/yr to the public (some reasonable rate), along with a yearly sponsorship instead of one-time. That would put the focus on maintaining a business capable of supporting the cost of the gTLD instead of a digital billboard and bragging rights. Maybe if that was in place, we wouldn't have stupid ones like .northwesternmutual

I do see a business case for not selling. .canon for example - you could provide every device with its own domain ie xhshe3u45.canon etc. So there are some cases where it does make sense.

You can do that already with uuid.cam.canon.com. At best you save a few characters.

Never co-host real applications and user controlled sites on the same root domain. You're just asking for a neverending stream of problems. (This is why everything ends up on googleusercontent.com and friends instead of google.com)

Can you go into more detail why? I'm curious.

It can lead to security issues with cookie sharing and domain validation.

My example would have been better as <uuid>.canoncam.com

My info may be outdated but what I originally understood was an application for sponsorship had to include details on plans for the gTLD which were subject to approval.

The idea was name brands like .microsoft could be kept private for trademark-protection but other gTLDs like .professional would go to applicants that intended to resell.

Not sure how this ended up in practice though.

If anything, the abundance of other options makes .com MORE valuable.

Same list with filtering and retail pricing from ~50 registrars: https://tld-list.com

Disclosure: I made tld-list.com, so this comment is a shameless plug.

  Binky Sky, LLC
  Binky Frostbite, LLC
  Binky Birch, LLC
  Binky Galley, LLC
  Binky Moon, LLC
  Binky Lake, LLC
  Binky Glen, LLC
  Silver Glen, LLC
  Holly Glen, LLC
  Grand Glen, LLC
  Magic Glen, LLC
  Magic Birch, LLC
  Magic Woods, LLC
  Magic Pass, LLC
  Fern Pass, LLC
  Big Pass, LLC

(snip, as it goes on and on) This reads like someone let their Markov chain register TLDs. Is there a rational explanation that isn't some domain-parking company grabbing up names and trying to conceal their identity by spamming the list with LLC shell companies? (And social networks get in a tizzy when I don't use my real name…)

I don't think it is an attempt to conceal their identity, if you look at the details of the registrations you can see these are all operated by Donuts (http://donuts.co). Perhaps it is facilitate management and future adjustments to their portfolio.

All of those companies are subsidiaries of Donuts: http://www.donuts.domains/ There's a complete list of all their TLDs (and the silly LLC names associated with them) here: https://domaintyper.com/new-gTLD/applicant/Donuts

I'm not sure why they formed LLCs for every domain they registered. IANA has lots of regulations and paperwork, and everything is really expensive and slow (it takes years to get a TLD registered). I'd imagine having every domain tied to its own LLC might make things easier (i.e. they can sell their TLDs by just selling the LLC, for example).

It's a common practice for liability isolation in real estate management. Every Carmel property is its own LLC. Maybe similar thinking?

Is Carmel a place or a company? A quick google did not help me and I'm curious.

Carmel is a seaside town in California.

Having each TLD application owned by a separate LLC allows the otherwise non-transferable application to be transferred if someone wants to buy .coffee from you.

I don't understand why so many corporations have gone through the very-expensive years-long process of getting their brand name as a TLD, and then proceeded to not use their TLD at all. The only brand name TLD I've seen in real world use is .google (https://domains.google, https://blog.google).

If you google "site:.whatever" ("whatever" being the TLD you want), you can see all the sites with that TLD that Google knows about. Very few of them have any other sites besides "nic.whatever" (which is just an information page about the TLD). I am seeing a few exceptions though: http://go.java, http://interactive.cbs

> I don't understand why [...] corporations [...] getting their brand name as a TLD, and then [...] not use their TLD

I hope this doesn't sound too snarky, but:

Maybe they know how worthless that TLD is, and just want to ensure they can't be damaged by competition registering those TLDs. After they secured those, they probably didn't want to waste even more money into that topic.

exactly this. its nothing more than brand/reputation management. 200k is a pretty small sum for the security of that.

Amazon uses their .aws tld as well. For example quicksight is hosted under https://quicksight.aws, and Chime can be found at https://chime.aws

The list of domains owned by Google (Charleston Road Registry Inc.) & Amazon (Amazon Registry Services, Inc.) probably give a good idea about their future (predictable) priorities (Google - Ads, Android while Amazon's list looks more shopping oriented)

Any ideas on what they they plan on doing with guge & esq domains?

guge is the pinyin for google in china

That makes sense now.. thanks!

I would guess they would target .esq to Attorneys. Someone else has .attorney so I wonder if Google tried for that one too.

Humorously expanding on that:

boo = surprises

eat = gluttony

esq = lawyers

page = egocentricity

    .youtube 	generic 	Charleston Road Registry Inc.

Is Google OK with that?

Yeah, that's a subsidiary of their's. See #6 in https://www.registry.google/about/faqs.html, and then https://goo.gl/maps/ZXcGhKqotHt for likely motivation behind the name.

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