New Top-Level Domains
newgtlds.icann.org
newgtlds.icann.org
Apparently they raised $100M[2] back in 2012.
They have since agreed to distribute these domains through 19 registrars[3] (eNom, Name.com etc)...
Looking at their ICANN PIC submission[4] they have registered no fewer than 200-250 LLCs
[0] : https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...
[1] : http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts
[2] : http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-fu...
[3] : http://www.donuts.co/news/donuts-adds-another-seven-generic-...
[4] : https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...
Do a ctrl+f for "ICANN" and you'll see how well-networked the Donuts.co team is. Can't be sure if this is true cronyism, or whether they just really know how to play the game. Not sure it's terribly different either way.
--Edit--
per chrisacky's link above (http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-fu...), it looks like Donuts.co submitted 307 applications at $185k/per, for a total of $56.8 million. That's a hell of a way to earn favors with ICANN while ostensibly just trying to get more picks.
What are these guys drinking? I'll give it a miss.
I found myself wondering the other day how long it will be before we see an attempted disruption of Google by a search crypto-currency.
It could create a market system for search terms, similar to NameCoin; it could allow "mining" by providing rewards for validated indexing. I could see there being huge incentives for a 51% attack, though.
Alas, I'm more of a UX guy than a crypto hacker, so such things are out of my ken. But I definitely see a market for a Distributed Autonomous Corporation that provides search, and it would have a much easier on-ramp with users compared to competing with DNS.
It would take somebody ~3 days of mining with a basic multi-GPU mining rig just to acquire the 0.01 NMC to register a domain name.
And the difficulty is jumping through the roof: http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php
Don't get me wrong, I'm still rooting for NameCoin, and I think distributed DNS is sorely needed. I just think it faces an uphill climb for adoption by users, browsers, and OS vendors.
On the other hand: is ICANN completely broken? This could have more serious ramifications down the road...
Do these additional generic top-level domains bring any benefits - beyond being a license to print money for the tld sponsor®istrars?
It can also be a cost (both moneywise and as a time sink) for brands wishing to protect their identify, if the number of tlds increases with a magnitude. (Multiplied by the number of misspellings and hyphenations etc).
It's probably likely to break a lot of (buggy) software (just try entering an @example.museum email around the web today).
Non-technical people are likely to be confused (so increased support costs, re-education, etc).
What happens to a gTLD and all the registered subdomains, when its sponsoring corporation goes under?
The DNS root zone grows, which may have undesirable costs for caching nameservers and DNS traffic.
It feels like a waste of energy and time that a non-profit like ICANN could have used for more constructive work.
In terms of the semantics: in the end it's up to people using it. I'm more worried about profiteering than confusion. But it's for the market to figure it out.
I don't think the traffic is significant. caching is very easy - you don't need to have all 10^12 - 10^15 domains on disk and even if the size per record is tiny.
Bugs are less significant than possible collisions and fraud.
Definitely agree with the sentiment that ICANN is broken.
I don't like that people (with money) will start buying up these generic top level domains and have complete control over who uses them. I would rather see a non-profit registrar of sorts but I know that would probably never happen.
Owning the TLD will probably ensure top ranking in that keyword's search results.
http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
I'm seeing the domain name considerations well below bigger factors (link juice, page rank, etc.)
Similarly I could see someone registering the ".html" or ".php" tld and causing some huge issues.
Although I must admit, owning the domain "index.html" would endow huge nerd cred.
This crushed the business model of most of the new TLD operators, so don't expect them to be around in a few years.
Do most mail servers follow this rule?
On the same note why TLDs, not just have a 'name registry'. Seems like technical dictates what is not natural. Why I can't have website name for example "burger" or "pizza" I get that there are designations and control entities. But isn't it a bit contrived? I am not against dot notation but whole synthetic user facing naming system...
if you buy .pizza you could technically host one website at
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for most browsers, but that's another topic...
And I'm sure www is a reserved term under most of the new TLDs. Haven't checked though.
Personally, I had high hopes for .co, but it doesn't seem too well adopted yet.
Or .js - to make Silicon Valley go orgasmic?
[1] http://www.gandibar.net/post/2013/10/29/The-launch-of-the-ne...
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)"
Can you eve view them?
Yeah, Google will help, but if the trend continues, the Internet will become less global. One language is better in this case.
Imagine if programming languages were in different languages with their respective characters - everything would be harder and everyone would have a whole lot to lose.
How is typing an Arabic or Cyrillic domain disadvantageous to those that read and write Arabic or Cyrillic? Especially when the resulting site is very likely to contain content in that same language.
Your argument seems very self-centered, and quite exaggeratedly so: you'd prefer disadvantaging non-English speakers when accessing content you wouldn't ever consume, simply because you are more comfortable with Latin characters yourself.
It just makes A LOT of logical sense to use one goddamn language online. It's not the offline world, it's been created from scratch, and English is already used in most (all?) programming languages, as well as most of the websites people actually use (although they do use region/country level translation).
Why screw that up?
It's a bit like if the US let Texas and California use Spanish as the official language, and the other states used English.
I don't think you'd be saying that if the one goddamn language was something you didn't speak.
.com = commerce
.gov = gov't
.net = network
.org = organization
These are simple terms associated with the language of those who invented the net, so it's no more specific than asking us to call "feta" cheese by its real name, even though it's not in our language.
Anyone knows which registrars are supporting these new domains?
.yetanotherkindausefulbutmaybenottld ? :)
I really think a lot of startups shoot themselves in the foot by just saying "everything in .com is taken." Well maybe, but that doesn't mean you can't pay $2-5k and actually secure your domain.
What I am saying is shelling out a few grand now for the appropriate .com will save you loads of time and headaches than if you try to brand on non dot-com and eventually realize you can't live without it.
Why would you want "startup" as part of your permanent brand identity?