The Best Internet Addresses Will Cost a Cool .Million | Hacker News Reader

The Best Internet Addresses Will Cost a Cool .Million

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12 pointsams117 comments

I have a feeling that organizations that are able (financially and technically) to run their own domain (named after their brand, ie .coke or .nike) will start to seem more authoritative than those that can only afford a .com address. Companies that end up doing this will inevitably have very corporate-looking/feeling sites that give consumers confidence in the organization. This in turn, will lead to people giving more credence to the custom TLDs than to .coms.

Not sure about what the impression might be of those who register websites with a generic domain (.softdrinks, or .shoes). That seems to swing the other direction.

Seems the usefulness of owning such a custom TLD id limited to those with huge brands to protect.

To me this is just a money grab by ICANN, they had better specify how they plan to use the money that they will cash by setting up this scam for the public good.

No doubt about the $$$ grab. I'm just thinking about the implications of having such a domain. Aside from providing the TLD system, what benefit do we have from ICANN now? And what benefit can you imagine them providing with all the potential loot from this move?

It should be an auction process for each name.

I'd love to hear from the professional domain squatters what they think this will do for their business model. I can't remember names but I know some of the larger players can afford to pay for those TLDs.

They might be able to afford the application process, but would they be able to handle the infrastructure required to administer the TLDs they buy? Seems like a costly and time consuming proposition for squatters.

You can outsource all the infrastructure to a real registry. (Like how the "non-profit" PIR outsources all operations to Afilias.)

I agree that trying to buy a TLD specifically for the purpose of domain squatting is very risky. But in case anyone wants to try it, may I suggest .con?

Every phisher's dream. I wonder if ICANN would be short-sighted enough to let that one through the application process.

I would buy the .corn tld.

That's a lot of money for a domain name. Tell you what, for a 'cool million' you can have ww.com .

Seems like it's time to get rid of domain names period :) Why not go back to numbers? Most people use search engines to get where they're going anyway. Who's with me? :)

I know you're joking but I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to only have a 'dns' that maps anonymous 10 digit numbers to ip numbers. You could then use your own 'local' address book (much like your cell phone address book) to map those numbers (that are portable) to your own descriptions.

I'm half-joking. Obviously, there are benefits to domain names; however, I'm not sure how we can return to the egalitarian nature of web addresses, what with most normal domain names taken. We'll go through a few more years of Socialisrs, Ooookies, StupidCombos, and ReallyReallyLongDomainNames, but then what? Domain names that cost tens of thousands of dollars on average? I'm not looking forward to that future.

AKA Pet names: http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html

I'd say the likes of .copm, .cop, etc. will be hot property - typical typos I always used to do.

I want to register .localhost ... :)

No worries, since I'll just register .milllion for $30 and call it a day.

This is either going to be more of the same (with .com) or it will be a complete non-starter.

(Oh wait, I just saw the end. Hah, $200K? Nobody will care.)

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