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Dawn of a New Internet Era

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50 pointsseky43 comments

For anyone like me interested in which new gTLDs were introduced but was surprised that their names were not included in the blog post:

شبكة (xn--ngbc5azd) — Arabic for "web/network"

онлайн (xn--80asehdb) — Cyrillic for "online"

сайт (xn--80aswg) — Cyrillic for "site"

游戏 (xn--unup4y) — Chinese for "game(s)"

Source: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20131023_first_new_gtlds_go_li...

Thanks for the list. I was trying to find it as well.

Serious question: what would sway one to register and use one of the above extensions compared to what's already out there? Other than localized content, I can't imagine typing شبكة would be simple...

Also, شبكة is also relevant in Farsi (Persian).

> I can't imagine typing شبكة would be simple...

It is pretty easy if that is your native keyboard. http://www.foreignlanguagekeyboard.com/images/kbarabic[1].jp...

"Other than localized content...."

I have a hard time comprehending your question. They've added a bunch of non-English TLDs which are clearly for use by non-English sites, but when you ask why someone would use them, you exclude the obvious use-case out of hand.

Aside from communicating with computers and other humans, what would anyone use the internet for?

Hmm. On my (US) Mac, switch input method to Arabic, hit af;m and get شبكة . So no harder to type than "info" really if you already have your machine set up to switch between Arabic and Roman/Latin keyboard layouts.

Thanks for the list!

It is somewhat ironic, that none of the registries are in (one of) the language's home countries... most especially given the recent NSA things happening.

yeah, i couldn't believe they were talking about all these new gTLDs and then neglected to mention any of them.

It would be helpful if there were a list of all the new TLDs.

Not exactly a 'list', but many of them are here: http://gtld.123-reg.co.uk/

edit: Here's a list: https://gist.github.com/peteryates/7132974

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for but couldn't find.

You're right, thanks for supplying the info

Looks like an application to apply is $185K, takes 4 months to process, and around a year to get approved. Not including costs for any legal or infrastructure needed to support your gTLD.

Total upfront costs are a little over a million from the applicants I have talked to.

The entire scheme benefits squatters (who register .shoes, .bacon, and 50 others) over legitimate users (who will get only say, .fedex). Once you Spend ~$800k in base costs (registry software, DNS infrastructure, etc), you just tack on an extra $200k for each extra name you want.

Pretty much the question is: Who is the richest troll ever?

ICANN

But will the ICANN accept those kinds of TLDs?

So far, unfortunately, they've shown no sign of rejecting them.

ICANN is a modern day Mafia. This is an extortion scheme to milk more money from corporations. Domains are becoming less and less irrelevant anyway - or at least gTLDs are. I cannot believe that we still tolerate the existence of this corrupt organization! The whole Redemption scheme is just unbelievable! Years pass and nobody does anything to get rid of this domainers-funded mafia!

[serious] Can we replace the icann?

Good question. gTLDs are an indication of them serving corporations over individuals and that means they're not to be used anyone.

Serious question: What is the detriment to the individual here?

The detriment is the lack of opportunity. gTLDs will become standard for the people who can pay for them and ordinary folks will be stuck on subdomains of conventional TLDs. Above all, it's an example of ICANN prioritizing money over a free web and the wealthy over the poor. No company that does that should have any control over the Internet.

New happy hunting ground for scams, phishing, typosquatting, etc.

> "When somebody sends you a message saying 'I'd like a new top-level domain name,' that gets handed to me, and I explain to them why that's a bad idea. Then they pretty much go away and we go on as before."

http://jonpos.tel/

How ironic - this message is served on .tel, possibly one of the most useless TLDs implemented.

(Telnic, the registrar for .tel domains, does not permit registrants to change the nameservers, or even DNS. All .tel domains point to a single web server run by Telnic which can only display web pages with contact information.)

It’s no accident that the first tranche of gTLDs to be delegated are all non-Latin strings

It's a shame it took so long, but hopefully this will stem the tide of young people who have been pushed towards using their language in transliterated form rather than the original script (I am thinking of Arabic dardasha writing specifically, but I imagine there are other examples)

There were already TLDs in non-Latin strings. including Arabic. For example, Saudi Arabia has had .السعودية since 2010.

Serious question here, what are the technical limitations in ditching gTLDs and allowing domain names to be any string?

Someone has to have root servers that serve the children of the TLD...where would those be looked up? The closest you could do is assume a TLD (i.e. .com) if it's not typed, but then you harm the non-.com names. It needs to be a tree where roots are controlled.

We have this already. All TLDs are under the root domain, ".".

You could start here http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-27ju...

Someone has to maintain a list.

OK so the responses seem to boil down to this. My question is rather why that list cannot live in a globally distributed database inside thousands of DNS servers, everywhere, operated by ISPs and volunteers. Sort of like now but every server would have a near-complete list of all domains that have no syntax or schema.

I guess the infrastructure costs would be higher, but what are other downsides? It definitely wouldn't be possible at the time of creation of DNS, but I can't see why it wouldn't be now.

Thats exactly how it works now. http://www.iana.org/domains/root/files

It doesnt because we have TLDs. Why is the hierarchy necessary? Why can't we have a one big list of strings matched with IP addresses?

gTLDs do allow you to have a domain name that is almost any string - I think the max length is 63 characters after punycode encoding, however it costs a lot of money.

Here's hoping for .js sometime soon

I just want .app. There's a zillion web apps, mobile apps, or desktop apps that could use this. And it's very memorable.

Not as memorable as .com.

It's a scheme - consumer know ".com" and nothing else. Well, in other countries, their local gTLDs, too, but those new domains are an obvious scheme.

It's not like regular people type in URLs much anyway, apart for a few sites (Google, Facebook, etc) - these days, pretty much everyone I've seen just googles the name.

I've even seen some adds actually say 'Google [word]' to find them instead of putting a URL, (or worse, 'Search [x] on Facebook!')

Exactly why it's an ICANN scheme and not serving the public interest - domains are becoming less and less relevant and they want to do one last try to extort money from businesses.

Yes. It is a cartel selling internet plumbing to technologists (bigco IT departments) and clue-challenged business-types as if this were some kind of perfect marketing strategy.

Best spend the money (USD 500K+) on SEO, or on simply improving the content and freshness of your existing site.

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