Google, Our Patron Saint of the Closed Web | Hacker News Reader

Google, Our Patron Saint of the Closed Web

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297 pointsyoklov94 comments

I am no fan of the search engine company named after a misspelling of a very large number. But nevertheless, in reading this article I immediately felt that I had missed something fundamental in my understanding of gTLDs: I had never previously assumed that any of the owners of these gTLDs were under any obligation whatsoever to open them for widespread public domain registrations.

Last year, when I argued the gTLD plan was a nefarious money-making scam cooked up by ICANN and large Internet corporations, a central premise of my rant was that Google and the rest of the usual suspects would snatch all of the best gTLDs for their own sites. I suggested that Facebook would probably buy .fb, allowing you to navigate to their site by just typing in something like "w.fb" or maybe just "fb" (I'm not sure if TLDs can resolve directly to a host as second level domains can).

I never once thought that Facebook as the owner of .fb would permit you or I to register a subdomain within .fb. My understanding was that all gTLD buyers were left to their own prerogative, be it exclusive use of the gTLD for their properties or leasing of subdomains in the traditional sense ala .com, .net, et al. In all the press coverage I consumed about the gTLD matter last year, I never assimilated a requirement for leasing of subdomains to the public.

Google's behavior with .dev is just a sideshow to the main attraction of silliness that is gTLDs.

> I'm not sure of gTLDs can resolve directly to a host as second level domains can

I'm pretty sure that "ping pt." used to work in the late 90's - though you had to supply the trailing dot.

There are a few; see RFC 7085: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7085

Looking up .museum also used to work, but it looks like something has changed.

http://to./ used to be a url shortener. Now it's just an apache default index.html, but it still works. :)

.museum doesn't work but http://www.museum redirects to www.museum.com

That might be true, but look at .ceo or .luxury you can't buy those domains very cheaply. If google doesn't want you using a .app or any of their gtlds they can simply make them prohobitivly expensive.

Exactly.

And to clarify, I very well may have missed something in the gTLD process that expressly requires—or attempted to require—the leasing of subdomains to the public. Although I was familiar enough with gTLDs to decide I was opposed to their creation, I nevertheless have spent little time actually studying gTLD requirements and processes in detail.

But even if there is such a requirement for public leasing, as you said above, the cost and process for subdomain registration could be designed by the owner to be prohibitive.

I am not joking when I say it not once occurred to me that owners of gTLDs may be required to lease subdomains. I assumed, in fact, that a great deal of them would be used as the exclusive playgrounds of their well-off owners. As far as I can tell, the linked article/blog entry doesn't actually establish that requirement, but I could be wrong.

The spelling "Google" predates "Googol", and influenced it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith#...

Funny. News to me!

It's not going to stop me from pronouncing the search engine name as "goo-glee" since it still appears in my mind as a misspelling of googol.

Which, as the link mentions, it is— just because their (intentional?) misspelling happens to coincide with an earlier form, doesn't mean it isn't a misspelling.

I always thought the name was influenced by Nikolai Gogol.

When I was a kid we would say someone with big eyes had "googly eyes". So, when Google came around I thought it was a reference to something like that (eyes, looking, seeing).

I had never previously assumed that the any of the owners of these gTLDs were under any obligation whatsoever to open them for widespread public domain registrations.

OK, but many people (including myself) had the opposite yet equally obvious intuition that ICANN wouldn't allow closed generic TLDs. It was so obvious to me that I didn't bother to check the rules, so now we're in this situation.

same!

Be that as it may, I am not sure what to do at this point. Had I controlled the Internet at large last year, I would have shut down the gTLD concept straight away as an unfair practice favoring well-healed corporations allowing them to achieve unprecedentedly short domain names while the plebs continued to suffer with second-level domains.

I remember hearing that Canon Corporation was going to buy .canon [1]. And to my mind it was clear: they have no intent of selling .canon subdomains. Canon Corporation has no interest in being a domain registrar. They just didn't want other corporations buying and squatting on .canon. It is a land-grab where the price per plot is $185,000.

Now that it has come to pass, I figure we'll all just adapt to it. I still don't like gTLDs, but so be it. You and I won't be able to get domains in .dev. So be it. I still have my domains in .com like some crazy old-timer.

[1] http://www.canon.com/news/2010/mar16e.html

Yes, I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing to be done about this. We can't flip the table because we failed to foresee a loophole.

It's probably worth lobbying to change the rules for future gTLDs, though.

Create a DomainBlock browser plugin to blacklist generic TLDs that are monopolized for commercial purposes?

I don't know who your "we" includes but people in the know have been complaining about this for years.

Actually, not that it matters for this thread other than to speculate...

What if every IP enabled commercial video monitoring device [1] on the planet were now able to have a functional and durable dynamic DNS service, ostensibly, for what comes next [2]?

[1] http://www.axis.com/products/index.htm [2] http://www.canon.com/news/2015/feb10e.html

Canon buying it's own .canon gTLD and closing it down is a way to allow http://canon in the address bar of a browser. This is fair IMHO because nobody else is expected to use a .canon domain, no more than a .canon.com one.

Buying a generic word and closing it down is a different matter. Tying .blog to only one service is very different than doing it with .blogger. It's a way of saying you won't have any other blog platform than mine, no matter if you're using your self hosted WordPress or one of the many services that compete with Blogger. This would be bad no matter who's going to win the bid for .blog or any other generic word.

> Canon buying it's own .canon gTLD and closing it down is a way to allow http://canon in the address bar of a browser.

It just occurred to me that—for advertising purposes—that would be longer than canon.com. They can't just plop the word "canon" at the bottom of their advertisements. Nobody would understand that to be a URL. So they would have to add the protocol to it:

    http://canon

which is 3 characters longer than what they could do now:

    canon.com

Not saying you're wrong about their intended use, it just struck me as ironic that having your own TLD would increase the size of your printed URL.

I think you're right for now but in future we could get used to those naming conventions. Think about the evolution of web urls in print:

http://www.company.com

www.company.com

company.com

company will be the next natural step. Maybe the step afert that will be naming the company after the domain name (some domains have hyphens in place of spaces in the name of the company now).

If it were not for the huge cost everybody could have its own gTLD. We could end up being surprised that a given company still has the .com suffix. "It's a small one, they don't have money", we'll think.

> If it were not for the huge cost everybody could have its own gTLD. We could end up being surprised that a given company still has the .com suffix. "It's a small one, they don't have money", we'll think.

Precisely, and one of the many reasons gTLDs are so distasteful. It marginalizes smaller businesses that cannot (yet) afford to play with the big-boys who throw around $185,000 as if it's nothing. Prior to this, domain registration was mostly a level playing field of first-come-first-served.

In a world where we often decry regulation that may benefit big business over small business, ICANN pulled this stunt which is egregiously and by design biased toward big business and it was more or less ignored by everyone.

Above, you pointed out that .canon is distinct from .dev because Canon is a trademarked name. Although I understand trademarks have been used to dislodge domain squatters, I believe that's extremely rare. Making a distinction between trademarks and generic terms creates ambiguity. The gray area of deciding between a company named "DEV" wanting to (or more likely feeling they need to) spend $185,000 to protect their identity and a domain registrar wanting to spend $185,000 to sell subdomains in "dev" is yet another reason gTLDs were a bad idea.

I can see another problem. I explain it with an example.

We know there are two Apple, the music company and the electronics one. The relationship has not been easy en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer but they have a trademark in their own business space and that's a case contemplated by trademark law. However there can be only .apple gTLD. I'd like to see what's happen has soon as one of the two Apples tries to get it.

This won't be the only case.

> nobody else is expected to use a .canon domain

Well, in fairness, I would have =)

There might have been usages for a common word like canon.While there might not be a use for canon.com there are sites with canon in their name. ex canonshot.com

Going forward, just like it happened with .com domain names, there will be rise of variations. Like .blogs or .blogg etc

> OK, but many people (including myself) had the opposite yet equally obvious intuition that ICANN wouldn't allow closed generic TLDs

Their FAQ on the process said they would. And lots of people made noise about it before the application process opened.

> The answer of course is to petition the Internet Darling Google...

> Why? Who knows. Maybe because Android is “open”, whatever the hell that means. Maybe it is because Google is strongly pro-net-neutrality, and Apple has made their customary “no comment”. Maybe because Google employees have blogs. The world may never know.

What? Did this person even read PPK's rant? He was saying the group that could force Apple's hand on Pointer Events is Google, and then proceeds to give explicit reasoning for this. No need to speculate on invent a convenient strawman for the rest of your post. It has nothing to do with hand-wavey openness, it's that they are the developers of the other browser that makes up a huge chunk of the mobile web. If they supported PE, over time it would certainly put some pressure on Apple (though situations like WebSQL/IndexedDB indicate that the pressure might not be that effective).

The rest of this is nonsense. A closed TLD is not an attack on the open internet. Honestly, who on earth cares. You couldn't get a .dev address before, you won't be able to get one now. Personally I don't think they should have opened up TLDs in the first place, but, whatever.

Meanwhile, quotes like

> This is a methodical, coordinated, long-running and well-planned attack on the open web that comes from the highest levels of Google leadership

make this article more than a little bit of a joke.

I can't help but wonder if they registered `.dev` because they have it internally routed on their corporate network now, and they don't want to all of a sudden have to deal with an employee not being able to read an article on a new blog help.dev because they also have a product called Help being tested at the internal URL help.dev.

If that's the case, them registering `.dev` might help everybody. It will give you a TLD that you can use for internal projects, knowing it will never conflict with a real site. Considering Apple's asinine handling of .local domains on iOS, a known-good alternative TLD could be a good thing.

Yeah, that was my first thought -- if Google registers .dev and keeps it in-house, this is good for the open web everywhere because we can all use it internally. Probably they can't say that to ICANN's face, but that sounds like it could have been a plausible intention all along.

In fact, if Google registers .dev and promises to keep it in-house, they can then tell the Chrome team that it's okay to trust self-signed certs for .dev, or something, thereby letting us all use HTTPS for development.

That... actually sounds hugely valuable for software houses everywhere.

You won't be able to use it internally unless you get split DNS and mangle your dns lookup configuration. Everything .dev resolves to 127.0.53.53 now. That ip address is a shot across the bow to warn you of the impending TLD registration.

    $ host blahflurgle.dev
    blahflurgle.dev has address 127.0.53.53
    blahflurgle.dev mail is handled by 10 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.dev.

You're going to have to set up split-DNS anyway if you want the records to resolve, right? Otherwise they would all NXDOMAIN.

A bunch of us who were "open" applicants for new TLDs (my company applied for .secure) tried our best to fight this in ICANN. The "closed generic" was not something properly anticipated by ICANN when they created the nTLD process (it's an insult to Byzantium to call the rules byzantine) and several large companies, Google and Amazon most brazenly, shoved themselves through some loopholes and created a category that was never supposed to exist.

The unfortunate fact is that the ICANN board is pretty spineless, and had no desire to restate the rules to prevent the private domination of generic terms (for example, Amazon wants to control the Chinese word for book, which is pretty aggressive for a company from Seattle when the Chinese invented moveable type). The board was so completely dedicated to moving forward that they endorsed the idea of the winner takes all auction and punted all of their responsibility for choosing which applicants would actually provide the most value to the world. Open small applicants have to win the auction using funds drawn from a business model of selling domains. These closed generic applicants can throw tens of millions of dollars at the auctions based upon the value of having a monopoly on a term like .app, .search or .secure.

In the end a bunch of us made pretty speeches and got a bit of traction with the EU government representatives in the ICANN GAC (but not the US, critically) but in the end we were steamrolled by the dozens of lobbyists and lawyers these companies send to every ICANN meeting.

Too late for outrage now. The whole process made me highly cynical towards the future of the name system as overseen by ICANN. At least I'm done getting food poisoning in exotic locations three times a year at ICANN meetings.

> The "closed generic" was not something properly anticipated by ICANN when they created the nTLD process

Really? Because its been in their FAQ on the gTLD process since before the application period opened (see questions 9.3 and 9.4) [0] Its kind of hard to argue that X wasn't "properly anticipated" by ICANN when their FAQ on the process said, approximately, "Can I do X? Sure!"

I also remember lots of discussion at the time that the process was announced and before applications were open pointing to the likelihood that many of the new gTLDs would be purchased for closed use.

[0] current: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq... ; 10 Jan 2012 version: https://web.archive.org/web/20120110192958/http://newgtlds.i...

I don't see how those FAQ entries prove that they anticipated registrations of generic terms for closed use. Before this I'd have read them more as "go ahead and register .google for your own use or .fifa for the use of only the teams associated with you!"

The article comes across quite ranty. This is rather unfortunate because it may distract, from an otherwise important message:

Why should corporations be granted permission to carve off valuable and generic domain mindshare for their own agendas?

One could argue "You couldn't register .blog or .dev before, and now you can't either, so whats the problem?"

Well, the issue would seem to be that it's reducing the possibility space for everyone. Indeed, there are other competing applications that would in the future be open to all, but will not come to pass, if this closed corporate capture goes ahead.

One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog?

> One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog?

Or just give them ".goog", and every corp gets its stock symbol as a TLD.

> One last point to consider, why can't Google apply for .googdev or .googblog?

They can (or, rather, could have when the window was open for new gTLD apps.) Anyone who had the money to put down could apply for anything they want.

(I'm guessing they applied for .dev because they are already using it internally for much the purpose that they describe, so given the probability that someone will pick it up for some purpose, the least disruptive thing for them is to pick it up as a closed domain.)

It is hard for me to get riled up over a TLD. Haven't they been decreasing in relevancy for years, first with the growth of search engines and then again with the growth of social networks? No one really searches for sites anymore by typing random words with a .com at the end. At this point, I just don't see that much difference between controlling a specific domain or a top level domain. I would have no problem if Google bought app.com, so why should I care if they buy .app? There are countless other TLDs to use anyway.

You do get a boost to your search-engine result page rankings if your domain name matches the search term, for example.

If your customers are searching for "find bee mortgages fast", then owning "findbeemortgagesfast.com" will be a valuable competitive advantage to your business.

everything I've read suggests exact match domains have been declining in SEO-potential, I don't think they have any merit now in 2015. Google changes it's algo pretty frequently so it's hard to get a fix for what exactly works and what doesn't.

Well perhaps then you can get riled up about a nonprofit regulatory organization bending its own rules to serve the interests of The Biggest Fucking Company Ever? Downplaying this because you don't care isn't what the comment section is for.

"I would have no problem if Google bought app.com, so why should I care if they buy .app?"

I'm not even sure you understand what TLDs are. Perhaps you should Google it?

>to serve the interests of The Biggest Fucking Company Ever

Going by market cap, I thought that was Apple, no? Not that it really matters.

Also, I doubt the parent commenter doesn't know what a TLD is, and it is kind of rude (and snarky) to write such things.

So you're not bothered by this behavior because there are alternatives, but there are only alternatives because this behavior was previously rejected. The ease with which you would give control over public concepts to private institutions without restriction is terrifying to me.

In what way is it a public concept and why is it a priority to keep it that way?

I just don't see the real and non-technical difference between app.com and .app. We have gone from a world with a select set of TLDs to a world were almost anyone with a couple hundred thousand dollars can create their own TLDs. With that change, domains went from a relatively limited resource to an almost unlimited one. I think that allows us to be less dogmatic and loosen the rules on how they are managed.

I am completely open to other opinions, but I would need a better reason than just appealing to the philosophical superiority of openness.

This is exactly how every commons is spoiled, by fencing it off into private lots, which is exactly what's being talked about here with DNS. It's akin to saying, "This portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is now private, and can only be used by Google."

Except you are comparing a nearly limitless resource with a very finite one.

If we are all about the common, why not force Google to allow me to register slg.google.com? How is that different than forcing Google to allow me to register slg.app?

Wow, that is vile. They seriously want exclusive control of TLD's like .dev and .blog? What the shit? I mean I know Google is a publicly traded company and thus has no real ethics or morals to speak of, but trying to strongarm ICANN into giving them TLDs that should be generic ones is pretty damn evil.

At that, what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you get every other TLD ever? I want a .dev and a .blog!

Google isn't having to strongarm anybody. ICANN outlined a process for creating new TLDs, and that process is essentially "if you give us enough money, you can have a gTLD all to yourself". If you have a problem with that (and you probably should, it's a pretty stupid process) you should get mad at ICANN.

> At that, what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you get every other TLD ever?

Other TLDs are either proprietary for countries who can set their own policy (ccTLDs), or assigned to organizations for either open or closed registration based on various policies, some "open" (in that the registry that controls them accepts registrations under generally-open terms, with perhaps some limits) and some "closed" in that they belong exclusively to one organization (closed TLDs include, e.g., .gov, and .mil; restrictive, but not exclusive, TLDs include .cat and .edu, fairly open ones include, among others, the ubiquitous .com)

The new "pay money to ICANN and get a gTLD" thing is different than the past in that you've got a large number produced on application and going to the highest bidder, rather than a small number each (other than the ccTLDs) created with their own fairly unique justification. But Google bidding on them is doing what lots of other people are doing since ICANN announced this process.

Is the process good? I think not. Is Google's use of it especially problematic? I don't see how.

It may not be especially problematic, but it is more problematic than if they were grabbing .google. It shows that the gTLD plan wasn't well considered. The more generic the TLD, the more there is going to be an expectation that it is open.

> It shows that the gTLD plan wasn't well considered.

That ICANN's gTLD rollout, is, from concept to execution, a complete disaster is not a point I'm going to argue against.

The question I'm asking is that given that the ICANN gTLD rollout is happening, what is the basis for complaining about the way Google is behaving?

>what is ICANN doing not making those TLDs available, not >under some draconian Google lordship, but the same way you >get every other TLD ever? I want a .dev and a .blog!

I'm probably one of the biggest slackers/ dumbest on HN and I know all about the ICANN process (it was highly covered here on HN), and how Google came to control those TLDs. How could you have missed it? It only happened in the last couple years, and it wasn't a secret or anything.

I'm ambivalent on closed tlds and against closing generic-sounding ones but what does this have to do with the open web? It's no different from owning a regular domain, just one level up.

How did OP go from owning a tld to North Korea? And what's with the excessive use of quotes? In particular, it's pretty clear what "open" means when applied to Android: https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

While Android is technically open (AOSP), phones don't run just AOSP. Not even the Nexus ones.

Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps.

"Runs on Android" in an advert does not mean "Runs on AOSP".

More open than iOS? Sure. As open as Linux? HTTP? Don't make me laugh.

This is a perfectly valid point. Not even a single Nexus device[0] can run pure AOSP without relying on proprietary firmware for graphics and networking.

[0]http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican...

> Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps.

This is exactly what Amazon does though.

... more like "offering" than "selling", given the massive writedown on Fire Phones.

> Good luck selling a phone running "Android" if it doesn't support the Google Play Store and their other proprietary apps.

Like the millions sold on China, India and the rest of Asia?

Google Play isn't available in China.

Available or not, the OP stated that it is very difficult to sold Android devices without Google services

trying to equate arbitrary strings with web browser interoperability is confusing at best and malicious at worst. one of these issues is important, the other is not.

.dev is three arbitrary letters. sure, i'd like a .dev domain too, but that's purely vanity. if google wants to spend millions buying up vanity domains, good for them, it doesn't really hurt anybody, and certainly has nothing to do with the open web.

look how important potentially cool domains like .biz and .info turned out to be. domains are purely fashion. .io is popular right now for no reason other than fashion, if .dev gets locked up by google for their internal use, then it will never become fashionable and nothing of value has been lost. When the world needs more domain names, a new gTLD will come into fashion.

This is disgusting behavior on google's part. I'm down with a .google or a .coke - thats fine. but to claim a .dev, or a .music or whatever is something else entirely. I really wish such behavior wasn't allowed.

fuck google

So, who was going to spend the $175k to make these generally available? A registrar who would probably decide they would let you have one for $100/yr? Did you know that there was a process where you could object to the proposals for these TLDs before they were allocated?

I don't think it costs $175K to push a string into DNS, but I could be wrong. Where does that figure come from?

When I searched for: ICANN $175,000 I found some talk about a Uniform Rapid Suspension slush fund for them to host 2 summits to talk to the intellectual/imaginary property community about lowering the price to file an infringement claim.

I also found the "gTLD Budget Explanatory Memorandum" [1] from their FAQ page [2], question 1.7 and it looks like they basically spend millions because, Lawyers.

[1] - http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq... [2] - https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/explanatory-me...

> So, who was going to spend the $175k to make these generally available?

Nitpick, but it was $185,000 minimum "evaluation fee" (on top of the cost to actually have, and demonstrate that you have, the "operational, technical and financial capability to run a registry"). [0]

[0] http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faq...

Ok, thanks. I was going by memory and didn't think it worth the effort to be exact. Being a pedant myself, I do appreciate the correction.

Personally I'd prefer .dev for local development ala http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/.

Let's petition Apple to make this default in OSX. Game, set match.

I always use .local and it's really frustrating that Chrome leaks these addresses to Google when I forget to type a trailing slash. Instead of hitting my local dnsmasq server, it does a search for the address that I typed in.

I'm a little surprised, but I don't know very much about the gTLD situation. When I looked at buying a .coffee domain, the Corporations had a window to buy the obvious (dunkin.coffee, starbucks.coffee), then it opened up to the public. I (stupidly) figured most TLDs would work that way.

I think by hoarding .dev (and others), Google will just kill the popularity. Since they'll be the only ones using it, it won't be well-known. People will still 'reach' for the dot com first. They can't register googcar.dev and not register googcar.com . I hope they just waste the whole thing in obscurity.

I'm glad to see more differentiation rather than everything being .com, as if it were a technical requirement. If we reach a point where gTLDs become an issue, it wouldn't be hard to replace DNS with something like Namecoin.

It would only take a browser extension or native browser behavior to toggle alt DNSs like user profiles or VPNs. I don't have anything against anyone buying a gTLD, but if it becomes an issue, we can easily fix it.

I think many companies use .dev internally. I would MUCH rather Google be the registrar than almost anyone else. And you can be sure that someone would try make it a TLD.

You can blame ICANN as much as anyone. Though if you are going to make many ludicrous TLDs you may as well allow so many as to make .com meaningless.

> Is my conclusion that Apple should get a free pass for hamstringing their web evangelists? No. Get your Safari team a blog, Apple. Let them give a talk at a fucking conference.

https://www.webkit.org/blog/

Last post: January 27. Second to last post, June 10, 2014.

Not really a blog, more of a half-abandoned PR portal.

http://planet.webkit.org

...where there is still only one post from an Apple or Apple employee blog in the past 6 months.

I appreciate the extensive primary source quoting included. And yet interspersed with a first rate rant. Makes me think of the Daily show.

Does anyone think Google has a solid plan for what they intend to do with these TLDs? Are they just making a land-grab without any specific plan?

A number of them it plans to acts as the registry for and they will be open for public registrations (.soy and .how, among numerous others, are examples here.)

The ones it is keeping closed it seems to have very specific plans for -- there letter to ICANN responding to issue of closed gTLDs I think discusses the plans for .dev and .blog (at any rate, they've been discussed in something linked to this discussion), .youtube / .google / .plus are tied to existing products, etc.

Obligatory disclosure: I currently work at Google but I don't do anything even remotely related to TLDs or the discussion at hand. These comments are my own and don't necessarily reflect the company's views, etc.

I'm going to apply Hanlon's razor here and assume misunderstandings but a lot of this post/rant is exceptionally misleading or even outright incorrect. A full point-by-point response would be more time-consuming than I'd like and more space-consuming than is really appropriate as a comment here. Instead, I've got already-too-long responses to a few of the points and I leave it to the reader to investigate further before cementing any opinions one way or the other.

Nor will I bother you with the other 100 applications for the other 100 TLDs, which are probably similar but I haven’t read all of them because it’s a Friday night and I have plans, so don’t shoot me if it turns out some of them are more evil than others.

At least he admits he hasn't read most of them but it's disingenuous to take a sample of 1 from 101 as representative and even more disingenuous to insinuate that any of the applications deviating from this sample are likely to fall into the "more evil" category.

Actually clicking through even some of the applications listed to "Charleston Road Registry Inc." we see a number of applications--including the ones for .zip [1], .day [2], and .inc [3] among others--proposing SLD registration be publicly available rather than strictly internally. And some of this--like .zip and .day--are proposed to be completely open while others--like .inc--are proposed to be restricted to relevant entities. Other applications--perhaps most notably, .youtube [4]--propose that the public not be able to directly register names but may be able to make use of vanity domains to link to content hosted in that TLD. These applications are also not all active. At least 29--including the mocked .blog--have already been withdrawn.

It’s sort of like how North Korea promotes choice because what if some people want to choose a totalitarian regime.

This is how the rant responds to the quote "Today, most Internet users have only one practical choice when it comes to how their TLDs are managed: a completely unrestricted model environment in which any registrant can register any name for any purpose and use it as they see fit."

It's unfortunate that this quote was taken out of context, however. Reading even just a few sentences further we see the actual meaning of the quote: restricted TLDs such as .edu, .mil, and .gov have proven useful alongside (rather than instead of) the unrestricted TLDs and users (both in the sense of those registering domains and those visiting sites and using services) may benefit from the option of relevant restricted TLDs. For example, the .inc application proposal includes a plan to require registrars to ensure that only corporations are eligible to register .inc domains in much the same way that .edu is only available for accredited US institutions. How much benefit there may be for such restrictions is certainly up for debate it certainly seems a far cry from the "North Korea" comment.

That Google should be allowed to close TLDs because nobody will notice anyway:

This is the rant's ridiculous response to the quote "Because of the strong user bias toward domains within .com, today a generic .com domain name (e.g., jewelry.com or book.com) is likely to produce more traffic and to be more valuable for a business than a generic TLD." out of context, this quote could mean almost anything but in-context it's not about open or closed nor about whether anybody will notice. Rather, it is specifically in regards to the notion owning the .foo TLD would be a significant competitive advantage over owning the foo.com domain or whatever.

"Closed generic TLD". Who even knows what those words mean anyway?

This is perhaps my favourite part of the rant. It mocks the letter for trying to discuss the meaning--or lack thereof--of the term "closed generic" and seems to suggest grabbing a dictionary. Even setting aside that the dictionary doesn't give us appropriately rigorous definitions of these things, the author seems to be missing the fact that this letter didn't spring out of nowhere. In fact, the letter is a comment on an ICANN request for comments on the topic [5] in which ICANN specifically requested comments "in regard to proposed objective criteria for classifying certain applications as 'closed generic' TLDs". If it were anywhere near as simple as grabbing a dictionary ICANN would have done that in the first place and commentary on the difficulty of rigorously and objectively defining the terms was perfectly in line with the requested discussion.

As I said before, these are only a few of the problems with the rant and there are a number of others throughout. You're obviously free to reach your own conclusions but I really hope that you're informed by pretty much any source other than this rant before you do.

[1] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [2] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [3] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [4] https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications... [5] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/closed-generic-2013-02...

What what a load of drivel... You're killing the messenger here. None of what you said here justifies what Google is doing for instance with .dev. How can you compare a restricted .gov TLD to the exclusive use of TLDs by Google?

If you read more closely you'll see that I did not say anything attempting to justify the proposal for .dev or indeed any other TLD. Nor did I compare the .gov restrictions to a completely-closed TLD.

My purpose was not to argue for a conclusion. I haven't even fully decided where I stand on a lot of the relevant topics. My purpose was merely to illustrate that this rant was full of mistaken and misleading information and doesn't represent a good source to inform oneself.

> restricted TLDs such as .edu, .mil, and .gov have proven useful alongside (rather than instead of) the unrestricted TLDs

They have? I haven't heard any solid reasons for them to be TLDs instead of second level domains of .us?

.cat is probably a better example of an established restricted (but not closed to a single entity) gTLD that doesn't make sense as a second level domain of a ccTLD than .edu (restricted), .mil (closed), and .gov (IIRC, closed for current use, but only restricted in the past and includes legacy registrations from that time.)

I wish catalonians the best wrt independence, and if/when they do succeed in that they are very much welcome to have their own ccTLD. Meanwhile they should live under .es hierarchy.

Of course the current hierarchy is lost cause anyways, so I don't really care what happens to it anymore. Only way to make any sense of it would be complete reboot, but I don't hold high hopes that such thing would happen.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that the author is completely misinformed, he knows it and he doesn't care. He is just trying to be controversial to gain notoriety, too many people doing it these days. It's enough to see the post's title.

google is a branch of the us government. nothing will ever happen to them and as long as other countries don't produce a better search engine we'll all have to live with their control of the www

Just wait until they make them work only with Chrome.

And how are they going to do that exactly? Threaten firefox and IE devs with guns if they resolve them?

Are you the kind of person who yells random nonsensical crap whenever you see something related to someone you don't like?

Just wait until their gTLD's will work only with Chrome, as well.

To be totally honest, this looks more like an internal management problem at Google than it does like a real effort coming out of their actual Internet strategy.

First off, the application to ICANN states that the purpose of this is to "... provide Google with greater ability to create a custom portal for employees to manage products and services in development."

That doesn't even make much sense, and honestly sounds like a bunch of corporate gobbledegook written by somebody who reads CIO Magazine.

Second off, this Ben dude is actually the CIO. CIO as in, guy who is in charge of internal IT. Printers, telephones, desktops, laptops, HR systems, financial systems, webpage based paperwork. If there were letters coming out of people on the service side, that would be one thing, but this smells like something embarrassing that snuck out when nobody was looking...

Apparently Google already internally resolves .dev to a host of internal services. They don't want those to conflict with external services. The best way to do this is to buy .dev, that way they can make sure this does not happen.

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