New TLDs have arrived

http://www.opensrs.com/blog/2013/11/new-tlds-have-arrived-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

by jpswade • 13 years ago

40 42 13 years ago

shin_lao• 13 years ago

I am unconvinced by the usefulness of those new TLDs. Am I the only one?

freejack• 13 years ago

No. In fairness to the operators though, I tend to think of these just like any other startup - they don't need my support for their business plan in order to give it a shot - so long as they can fund it and find customers, who am I to judge whether or not what they are doing is useful.

I say this because for some reason people feel like these strings should be vetted before they go into the root and all sorts of obstacles are thrown in the path of these nascent ideas. Most of ICANN's work in the past few years has been focused on creating and implementing these obstacles in the name of "stability", etc. I'm not advocating for a completely open root, but what we've got is a bit much.

obDisclaimer: I work for a registrar.

rlpb• 13 years ago

My problem with new gTLDs is that it is a limited namespace, and when it's gone, it's gone.

The gTLD space is also handy for classifications. If I see a ccTLD, I know that it's delegated to a country, and isn't some phishing attempt at gTLD level. Since I'm familiar with the .uk space, if I see a .gov.uk, I know that it's delegated to the UK Government, and that it isn't some phishing attempt at .uk level. This chain requires a "brand" presence at each level. Permitting a free-for-all at gTLD level would dilute this.

The point of [hierarchical] namespacing is that we can subdivide them.

We once had a single free-for-all area, which we called .com. People say that it's full, so we need more space. But instead of growing down the hierarchy, where there's unlimited space, they want to grow up, where there is just one namespace left.

But you can only grow up once.

If we didn't have a .com, and we just let people register in the gTLD space directly, then where would we be now?

If we want to think commercially, "like a startup", then companies should be able to register a .com and sell subdomains to third parties. They've certainly tried. Why can't they achieve notable success? Because the .com space is diluted free-for-all space where a .com name cannot achieve the level of notability needed, just as what will happen to the gTLD space if ICANN continue on this path.

The rationale for adding arbitrary gTLDs is self-deprecating. This route can only be a victim of its own success, just as the namespace problem inside .coms has already demonstrated. And then that will be it.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

No. It's just a scheme to shake some more money out of those fanatically protecting their trademarks and people with vanity issues.

You still need to put a brand name or trademark in front of the TLD, so it really doesn't add anything to anybody's options for registering a domain.

Nikon will want "nikon.camera", but it has no value to anyone else, if you register it their lawyers will take it from you anyway.

Neutral names, like "dlsr.camera" may be cool to have (ie, vanity), but if someone else owns "dlsr.com" and or "dlsrcamera.com", your basically sending traffic to them if your trying to communicate it offline, so they have very little practical value.

Alternative use of existing national TLD's has proven to be a niche for techies like us (.io), and failed to gain any traction with regular users, despite some pretty obvious ones (like .tv). New style tld's we already had are also barely used for other than rare pragmatic reasons (.info), or are as good as dead (.mobi, .biz).

I see no reason why these new TLD's will be any different.

gcb1• 13 years ago

this will also get tons of money from ppl "investing" in another domain rush.

$120 non refundable fee for meet.singles, date.singles, etc... multiplied by every sucker out there... it is a considerable non-refundable fortune

walshemj• 13 years ago

No I could see the point of earlier expansions. coop for coops or having a .bank that only registered banks could use and banks woudl be forced to only use.bank.

These new domains are vanity domains for politicians og my city has its own domain what value does .london or .edinburgh have.

Or ways of extorting brand holders my director at reed Elsevier told me that the c level's where getting pitches to "protect" their brand names from these new domain companies.

scotthtaylor• 13 years ago

I hate new TLDs... all of them look terrible.

bachback• 13 years ago

No, it is my impression that 99.999% seem to believe the same. No upvotes on HN, and only dirty jokes about it (how original). Quite amazing given that this is one the major changes of the internet's naming infrastructure. Think about use cases for example where a person or company owns a TLD and assigns sub-domains to products. That is tremendously powerful. Or use-cases where it improves search capabilities. For instance if every .lawyer would be assigned only to "registered lawyers", .lawyer would be meaningful. Alas the way it's going down is not optimal, but we will see.

rschmitty• 13 years ago

Every registered lawyer will not be able to have a .lawyer by any remote stretch. If they ever do a .lawyer there will be an initial name grab for the "prime names", but past that you will have a very large majority of lawyers picking the least worst option between .lawyer .com or .whatever they can fit their name in

Also I dont see how product-name.tld is better than tld/product-name from a user point of view. What is stopping amazon from doing product-name.amazon.com right now?

kijin4• 13 years ago

Registered where? California? New York? The Netherlands?

That's the problem with creating .lawyer, .plumber, etc. as TLDs rather than a subdomains of an appropriate ccTLD. There's not enough local oversight to make them actually valuable. If I were in need of a California lawyer, someone who owns a .lawyer.ca.us (administered by the state) would look much more trustworthy than someone who owns a generic .lawyer domain (could be a scammer in Nigeria).

Ditto for things like .paris and .london. There's no reason they can't be administered as paris.fr and london.uk respectively, and I'm disappointed that the national registries of these countries failed to offer enough incentives for people to prefer such subdomains. Besides, I can easily imagine residents of Paris, Kentucky (paris.ky.gov) and London, Ontario (london.ca) getting pissed with those big cities who think they can get away with exceptions like that.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Think about use cases for example where a person or company owns a TLD and assigns sub-domains to products. That is tremendously powerful.

I don't think I agree. People don't care about URLs after they have entered the first one into their browser, and for that, the shorter the better. Nobody likes typing long URLs with subdomains, that's why almost everyone uses Google to find any website that's not shortword.com.

ye• 13 years ago

All the good and short names under .com and .net are taken.

I'd say we need a TLD for every dictionary noun to show the finger to the domain squatters.

kijin4• 13 years ago

I can understand TLDs like .web and .app, they seem to have legitimate uses.

But I agree that the ones on the current list look terrible. Does the world really need .holdings and .ventures? Of course not, it's just some company wanting to sell overpriced perks. And .equipment is plain ridiculous. What's next, .lawnmower and .leafblower?

ToastyMallows• 13 years ago

Agreed. I hope I never have to type http://kodak.photography.

adobriyan• 13 years ago

What's next, .lawnmower and .leafblower?

.foo and .bar would be nice.

bigd• 13 years ago

I would love to register

["porn."+ tld for tld in ["guru","plumbing","bike","equipment"]]

also ass.ventures

dagurp• 13 years ago

and rusty.ventures

caf• 13 years ago

I'm sure the bidding for rough.trade will be fierce.

tombrossman• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity I just highlighted 'rough.trade' and right-clicked to see if Firefox offered to open it as a link and was surprised to see it did. Looks like browser support is here even if public support isn't.

kijin4• 13 years ago

ad.ventures is probably worth more $$$ ... but perhaps not enough to justify the ridiculous prices they'll ask for two-letter domains.

billpg• 13 years ago

I can see a market for these domains for personal use, unlike the personality-free yawn-fest that is the .name domain.

A business using these new domains, however, would just reek of "I am a fly-by-night operation! Do not trust me!"

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

Is the sunrise fee a thing across all registrars or just opensrs?

acomjean• 13 years ago

It seems "sunrise" period is for Trademark holders. Not sure if the fee is specific to opensrs.

https://opensrs.com/site/services/new-tlds/launch-phases

names version

https://www.name.com/preorder

A lot of these domains seem to be "auction" type not "first come first serve"

https://opensrs.com/site/services/new-tlds/launch-list

petejansson2• 13 years ago

All new gTLDs are required to offer a sunrise period during which rights holders can register names corresponding to their marks. (Mostly trademark holders, but other rights may be recognized at the discretion of the registry.) During sunrise, names are not generally available, so registrar guarantees of pre-registration before sunrise should be carefully examined. If there is contention during sunrise registrations, registries generally will have a way to work it out, with auction being a frequent mechanism. Because of the extra mechanisms associated with operating the sunrise period, many registries and registrars may impose additional fees during sunrise. (As a registrant, you'll only see fees from the registrar.)

URGENT public service announcement: Many of the new gTLD registries will use the Trademark Clearinghouse (http://trademark-clearinghouse.com/) to determine who owns what rights. If you have a trademark, it's really in your interests to register it there, as it will be available to all the new gTLD registries. If you look at the new gTLD rules, it's important to register your marks before expiration of the sunrise for the first new gTLD to go live.

gesman• 13 years ago

.tiredofyourworthlesstldshit is missing

smallegan• 13 years ago

TLD = Too Long Domains?

JoeAltmaier• 13 years ago

I worry that I won't be able to judge the validity of a link by checking for '.trademark.com' at the end. How will I know if the entity I'm dealing with has purchased all these junk tlds? Who do I trust now?

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

The more this goes on, the more I'm convinced that non-national TLDs was a mistake.

One TLD for each country that their government can manage however they see fit, one TLD for international usage run directly by ICANN, and one reserved TLD for intranet usage. Then you could have the international TLD be implied if you leave it out of a URL.

But ofcourse, this is monday-morning quarterbacking.

So, is .Bike for motorcycles or bicycles?

strozykowski• 13 years ago

So, is .Bike for motorcycles or bicycles?

Yes.

dublinben• 13 years ago

What happens when a motorcycle company named Foo and a bicycle company named Foo try to secure their domain? Both have an equally legitimate claim over their trademark used in the motorcycle/bicycle sphere, but they cannot coexist in this new namespace.

singold• 13 years ago

Bike, Ethiopia maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike

Let alone other languages...

wikwocket• 13 years ago

Is creating new TLD's something that any registrar can initiate now? Who decides when new ones are needed and approves them? Some of these seem extremely niche compared to e.g. "com" or "net."

petejansson2• 13 years ago

Not registrars. The delegation of new gTLDs into the root is the culmination of the first round of new gTLD expansion, an ICANN project that has been going on for quite some time, and has an extensive evaluation process -- see http://newgtlds.icann.org for lots of information on the process. It's likely that there will be a subsequent round at some point in the future. Meanwhile, there are a large number of new gTLDs that are being delegated into the root over the next few months. Soon, gTLDs will outnumber ccTLDs.

robmcm• 13 years ago

Are these just in English, what about translations could be confusing.

kijin4• 13 years ago

Just a friendly reminder that if your domain validation regex goes something like [a-z0-9-]+\.[a-z]{2,6}$ , you'll need to fix it to accommodate these entirely unnecessary and excessively verbose additions. And I thought .museum was long enough...

Kudos if you already support IDN ccTLDs like .中国, .한국 and .рф. Honestly, I think they're even less useful than the ones we're seeing today, but I digress.

gergles• 13 years ago

.singles? Really?

How much for kraft.singles? Come on, these gTLDs are a joke.

I have always been a staunch opponent of new gTLDs, because phishing and the like are bad enough as is. In addition to that, now we expect another gigantic troll tax of $165 x 14 + $165 x (however many new shitty gTLDs they can landgrab) for every large company that needs to defend its trademarks? What a clusterfuck.

ilaksh• 13 years ago

This is great.

IvyMike• 13 years ago

The .plumbing domain is, in fact, a series of tubes.

New TLDs have arrived

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