ICANN approves relaxation of TLD rules | Hacker News Reader

ICANN approves relaxation of TLD rules

guardian.co.uk

20 pointssah19 comments

I've seen several negative reactions to this decision which I find to be odd since my reaction was very positive. Here are my reasons why this is awesome:

-It opens up vast new swaths of web territory and makes it easier for the ordinary Joe Hacker to find a memorable web address

-It devalues cyber-squatters current portfolios

-It seems arbitrary to limit TLDs to a certain subset of characters in the first place

Is there something I'm missing? Why all the anguish out there?

edit: Actually, doesn't the existence of TLDs seem arbitrary, too? Why end every URL with .SomeString?

TLDs are there because at one point they made sense. First it was locations... and, if there is anyone here who recalls before the dot-com boom it was actually pretty damn difficult to book a .org if you weren't an organization or .com if you weren't a company. But then with the huge surge of websites and startups back in the 90s these rules were highly relaxed and a TLD became meaningless and without value.

- For companies trying to protect their trademark, the job just got [infinitely] harder.

- It will be harder to tell you're being phished (apple.computer is a fake?)

- Companies with half a million dollars to burn will now own TLDs and have an advantage over smaller companies

- It means you now have to remember two pieces of information, the domain and the TLD

- It's simply a money grab by ICANN

- etc

My guess is most traffic will stay at the current TLDs just like the recent ones haven't done much (.biz, .info, .mobi, etc).

My guess is most traffic will stay at the current TLDs

I think that's right. The mitigating factor here is that Prometheus' observation:

Actually, doesn't the existence of TLDs seem arbitrary, too? Why end every URL with .SomeString?

...is a pretty good description of the de facto situation today. Basically, there is only one important TLD - .com - and both surfers and browsers are happy to pretend that it's unnecessary. If you own a domain with any other TLD, it requires people to remember a meaningless suffix, and/or the placement of a meaningless dot inside your name. ("deli.cious? del.ic.ious? delic.io.us? What the hell was that, again?") The result is marketing poison, and nobody recommends it.

This ICANN decision is bad, but I think the main effect will be to further amplify the value of .com domains (the ones which don't require you to remember a now entirely arbitrary TLD). And/or it will further cement Google's lock on the first five seconds of any web-surfing expedition (as if they needed it).

The only danger is that we will wake up one day and discover that typing "zyzygy" into a browser redirects you somewhere other than zyzygy.com. If that happens than we'll know that ICANN has succeeded in setting off the biggest land-grab stampede in the history of the world, the cybersquatters will die of ecstacy, and I will want to kick something.

yes and no...

Remember one of the common ways of getting anywhere is to type www.google.com in the msn homepage that comes up. And then you type www.myspace.com into the google search box...

This "may" be a solvable issue...

Yes, it opens up new territory and devalues squatters, but only for a short while. After companies and squatters grab the new URLs they want, the situation will be the same as it is right now, except we'll have many more domain registrations pointing to the same amount of content.

And don't expect the price tag to maintain sanity... The ICANN will gradually lower that over time to increase revenue, just as they have with regular domains, and just as they are doing right now by making TLDs available.

This is useless, all this will do is line ICANN's pockets with money.

The .com will always be king, so it'll remain THE name for people to get. Look at the current domains, how many do you see going for the .us? .biz? domain extensions?

The whole "Big businesses will use it to make it easier for consumer is pretty dumb too", you can go to toys.ebay.com now, and get where you want to be, all this'll do is make you go to toys.ebay.

Third try typing that out...you'll be halfway to typing out .com before you realize you don't need it.

Its just a way for ICANN to make money. Nothing more, this will do nothing to help the consumer, and is only there so that Google will spend another 5 mil a year Google.paris, Google.France, google.uk, google.hackernews

We might as well go back to AOL Keywords

From the BBC article on the topic:

"Does Tesco want .supermarket or .groceries?" said Graham Hales, of branding consultancy Interbrand.

"Or maybe it wants .value or .everylittlehelps. The choice is endless."

While this may address the lack of domain names now available thanks to squatters and collectors, it'll make the web a mess! It's already bad enough with some of the more exotic domain names in use, but with custom TLDs it'd be easier to just memorize the IP address instead!

Yeah, I agree here and was disappointed with this decision. Out of the window goes the simplicity everyone aims for on the web.

It potentially makes it simpler, in that pretty much any string could be a url.

It will be much easier to get a memorable URL. I don't think that makes that web a mess. We might even be spared the future clikkr.o.us's of the world.

The cost will probably be so prohibitive to most people that only large brand names will bother. And even then, they will have to overcome huge challenges with marketing such exotic TLDs. If they an achieve this, it will benefit us all.

I doubt take-up on generic keywords will be that strong, except amongst naive speculators.

I think it's going to be a lot harder to get yourself a TLD than people think. In addition to the large sum of money, you also have to prove that it isn't offensive and doesn't infringe on anyone's rights and "the business or organization must prove that they are either capable of managing the TLD or can reach a deal with a company that will" [from the ArsTechnica article]. These obviously won't be issues for the eBays and Amazons of the world, but how many squatters will actually be able to prove they can manage a TLD? I'm no expert, but there's gotta be some huge technical and maintenance issues there.

I'm also curious if people who register TLDs will be required to allow the general public to register domain names under them.

Among other things this will mark the start of a new era in phishing.

Anyone have news on how the registration process is going to work?

From the ICANN's perspective:

  1. Announce that URL's can now contain different TLD's
  2. Make sure the people buying them have at least $100,00 to half a million, if so, let 'em register!
  3. Profit!

I was in favor of this kind of thing and supported AlterNIC in the early 90's, but I'm not so sure about this new change. ICANN wants to charge how much? AlterNIC was free, and so are other alternate DNS roots.

I'm getting .google

Where did you get your law degree? I hope you specialized in trademarks! ;)

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