Ask HN: What does HN community think of new gTLDs?

Some of them are cool, especially the shorter ones — like .mom, .music, .wiki

But then you have ones like .photography and .international — seems 12+ letters just for the domain name extension seems overboard.

And then you have the completely absurd ones like .blackfriday — I don’t even begin to understand that one.

It’s really going to come down to the masses and how they are received by them. Confusion about a gTLD vs a .com may not even be an issue because SO many people just type stuff into Google. Yes, every time.

I think the shorter ones will take off faster, but xenophobia.international does have a bit of a ring to it though

For some domains you will likely need to get a new SLD from a gTLD. For example, a club may need mycoolclub.club in order to remain current or modern. The city of Paris will have a whole new set of TLDs. metro.paris, wine.paris etc... and those would make the related websites look more professional. My startup's technology (simMachines) has been involved in the process of selection of gTLDs and security compliance checks so I can tell you that ICANN has invested a lot in making sure the transition will be safe and fair for everybody.

I'm pleased with this development, because the proliferation and marketing of new domains should create awareness among the general population that there are alternatives to .com (which should benefit those of us who use them!).

The more that happens, the less the conventional wisdom about .com's (with their relative scarcity) will apply.

In essence these tlds are just a license to print money for the managers. No one else has a real reason to use these tlds, just for enhancing the "virtual primary male sexual organ".

For everyone else the slew of tlds makes life just unnecessary hard (email validator regexes!)

A greater variety of gTLDs allow better descriptions of a site's purpose and function than the traditional gTLDs. I like them and hope that we see more in the future. Are there any downsides that I am missing?

I am currently utilizing both a .email and .io address.

I like them. Yes there are MANY, but it's cool. So far I have colour.house and color.house which are redirecting to one of my .com sites. It remains to be seen how these new gTLDs show up in search.

They are pure noise.

.com and its localized variants like co.uk is a button on a mobile keyboard. Apps can be on any domain because they are found by keywords in app marketplaces.