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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why we even have TLDs, and don't just register names at the root level. Sure, it's nice to be able to shard data structures among many providers (.com can be different servers/infrastructure/rules than .net) and might have been a technical necessity "back in the day" (though there weren't many shards, so I doubt it), but now it's actively harmful. You found a company called foobarcorp and register foobarcorp.com... and some jerk registers foobarcorp.net, foobarcorp.info, foobarcorp.sucks, etc. Why even allow this? Let there be one and only one foobarcorp.

Yes, I'm bitter that Google gets google. but I'm stuck with jrock.us. Why does it cost millions of dollars to remove one dot from my domain name? There is no technical reason. Maybe it's time to overthrow the default root servers and start our own Internet.

Also "." should have an A record.

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It's not the company name TLD's that are most of the problem, it's the most generic words that are the problem. Amazon tried for .amazon and that's currently in a big dispute ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.amazon ). What if they setup a service called River and used river.amazon?

They also bought .bot, google did .app. Those are where the real problems are - because now "big internet" controls the TLD and can do almost anything they want with it.

On the flip side, lots of people like to use CC TLD's. So if you happen to like your .fm domain (like say di.fm) that's great... except now you are beholden to the Federated States of Micronesia (which most people probably couldn't even point out on a map).

> Yes, I'm bitter that Google gets google.

Google can have google for all I care. I am less than happy with them staking their claim on generic terms with the "new" TLD and trying to present document.new redirecting to Google docs as the best thing since sliced bread.

Not to mention web.dev which sounds like it would be like MDN or something, but is entirely about Chrome.

It’s actually similar to MDN in that it’s run by a browser but supposedly about web standards. However, it can be a little too Chrome-leaning…

> foobarcorp.net, foobarcorp.info, foobarcorp.sucks, etc. Why even allow this

Because there can be multiple companies with the same name. Why cut them off from using their own name in a domain address?

That problem isn't really solved with the TLDs.

You already have that problem - there is only one .com and most companies will want to hog all others too.

I find it really nice that we have county based TLDs. If I google search for places to buy XYZ and I see xyz.ca, I know in buying from a Canadian website.

Also, you can have country specific information, eg immigration.co.uk, which is pretty obvious who it applies to.

You really can't guarantee that if you buy from a .ca website that it will be a Canadian company.

I bought from a .no, and was surprised when I was hit by a large customs fee when I went to pick up the package. The company ended up actually being registered in the Netherlands and failed to disclose that they weren't collecting the duty tax. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any of the consumer groups in Norway or the Netherlands to take any action over it.

CCTLD policies vary, but Canada should be one of the TLDs that this is a reasonable thing to expect: https://www.cira.ca/policy/rules-and-procedures/canadian-pre...

Agreed we should have names at the root level. There's a new DNS protocol that enables this called Handshake. It's an alternative root zone where anyone can register a root TLD through an open vickrey auction (unlike ICANN which often works behind closed doors...).

For instance, I registered my name tieshun/ which you can resolve through NextDNS, a Handshake Chrome extension (https://github.com/execc/link-frame), or a Handshake gateway like https://hns.to/tieshun

THIS is the way of the future. Hell, it's not even the future anymore. TLDs should have been the very first thing that got decentralized. (ok, SECOND behind money) ICANN is a monopoly whose corruptness should be criminal. Example: they make Google a partner to sell TLDs as a registrar. Therefore, google can give priority and precedence to searches for TLDs on ICANN's registry and not a competing registrar (like Handshake). Before this (Handshake), where could you go to get an alternate competing top level domain? Answer: nowhere. It's a monopoly by definition.

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