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Today reporter
interviewed me for this article and we spent over an
hour talking about the ramifications of flooding
the market with new TLDs, the vast majority of which
would sink without a trace, just as several other
new extensions have in recent years. Ms.
Jones is a diligent reporter and I appreciate the time
she spent researching the article and getting a grasp on
the subject matter before writing about it (something
too few mainstream reporters do when reporting about
domain related issues). I do think I should expand on
one of my comments that she quoted in which I said
".Com was the only choice in the early years
of the Internet, so that has been branded in the
public's consciousness. If you're a small businessman
and you buy a new extension you've got an uphill fight.
It's going to be like being invisible on the Web." This
was part of a detailed conversation that she obviously
could not use in its entirety because of her space
limitations. As you all know, .com was one of the three
original primary extensions (along with .net and .org)
but the only one meant for general use, so it was the
only real option for businesses, other than network and
internet service providers that the .net was intended to
represent. As a result .com became synonymous with
the Internet in the American public's mind (local ccTLDs
held sway in many other parts of the world).
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In 2001 two new
global TLDs, .info and .biz, were
introduced. The next year America's
country code, .us, which had previously
been reserved for government use, was opened to
the general public. I personally hold many
domains in all three of those extensions, so I
am certainly not opposed to new TLDs. However
I've learned from experience that it takes many
years for any new TLD to gain even
modest public recognition and use on the
Internet.
After seven years,
I've only recently seen the original round of
new TLDs gaining some ground among small
businesses who want domains that include
words or terms no longer available in .com. They
continue to be largely ignored by most
major corporations (who acquired .com addresses
long ago), other than some foreign companies,
like BMW,
Hitachi
and Club
Med, who think in ccTLD terms and
use .us for their American operations. |
That is why I say that a
small businessman who buys a name in a new extension
that will only be getting started next year will
essentially be invisible on the web for a long
time to come (short of an unimaginably expensive
marketing campaign - the likes of which no previous new
TLD registry has had the capacity to undertake). There
is certainly no shortage of available space in
the under-utilized new TLDs that have been
introduced over the past 8 years, so there is no need
for a flood of new extensions when the existing ones are
still finding their place on the web. I think the better
path would be to continue to release new extensions in a
methodical manner where a clear need and viable
use can be demonstrated (though ICANN's painfully slow
process for doing that could certainly be streamlined).
The purpose of extensions in the first place was, like a
good filing cabinet, to bring organization and
meaning to the naming system. In my opinion ICANN's plan
would replace that with clutter, chaos and unnecessary
expense for thousands of businesses.
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I'm sure you have
your own opinions about ICANN's plan and you can
make those known to ICANN now - but you
need to act quickly as their current
public commentary period on the new gTLD issue closes
on Monday (April 13). You can let ICANN know
your views by posting your opinions on this
page at ICANN.org. There are more
links and background on these issues in a thread
started by George Kirikos at the DomainState.com
forum that we encourage you to review. |
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(Posted
April
7, 2009) |
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