The web is about to change with a range of new domains due to appear. But does it mean the web will get easier to surf, dot com addresses will disappear and Google quietly fade away?
It’s expected ICANN, the International Committee of Assigned Network Names is set to approve custom global Top Level Domain names – known as gLTDs – which will allow big organisations to buy their own domain names.
This idea was first announced in 2008 and was expected to be in place by the end of 2009 but the Internet bureaucracy is not known for quickly making decisions.
Once this policy is in place organisations can register their own domain and not bother with a .com or other suffix.
For example Microsoft could ditch the microsoft.com domain and move the .microsoft address with websites named support.microsoft and shop.microsoft
The cost of one of these global Top Level Domains will be $178,000 with $25,000 annual fees, given the cost it’s only going to be the largest organisations who can afford them.
Even then, we’ll see many businesses simply not bother. Given the current proposal includes strong provisions against cybersquatting, there’s no need for trademark holders to rush, it’s quite feasible that many will sit out the hype and wait for the prices to drop.
Where these domains will work well are for internal networks and secure applications where system administrators can lock out unauthorised devices from their domains.
Excluding search engine robots will provide a certain level of security along with some opportunities for corporate mischief like we’re currently seeing between Google and Facebook.
The potential for misbehaviour by owners of these domains will be a barrier for small business adoption. Few businesses or groups are going to trust their online properties to a .facebook, .ibm or .apple address when they can own a domain with the current registrars.
An application being cited is using the .music domain and selling space to performers. That’s nice but it locks them into the same risks they currently have with Facebook and MySpace that at the first sign of controversy their account will be shut down for allegedly breaching some obscure term of service.
A major problem for ICANN is going to be place names, how do you decide between Birmingham, England or Birmingham, Alabama when the .birmingham name comes into play?
Better still the argument between the city of Victoria, British Columbia and the state of Victoria, Australia becomes problematic.
Even more delightful is who owns a place name? Should Australia wrest the rights to .sydney off Nova Scotia, the dysfunctional state of Aussie politics almost guarantees an unseemly brawl between the Federal, state and local governments over the name.
The corporate sector has similar problems with similar trading names being used in different jurisdictions, Woolworths in Australia and the UK is one that immediately comes to mind.
While it’s clear many of the domain registrars think these new names are going to be a nice little cash cow, it’s not difficult to see they may have misunderstood just how complex and fraught some of the registrations will turn out to be.
Most of the registrations though will be straight forward and far from killing search engines, the further fragmentation of the net into even more domains is going to make services like Google and Yahoo! even more powerful as web surfers will find it harder to guess or remember websites.
On balance it’s unlikely the new top level domains are going to put the search engines out of business or see the dot com addresses we’ve grown used to disappear.
What we are seeing though is the evolution of the web, search engines will adapt and the addresses we use will develop as the technology changes.
It is quite possible that eventually we’ll have our own personal top level domains should we want them when the price drops to the levels we’ve become used to with dot com addresses.
This won’t happen overnight and it’s a long way off if ICANN and their members keep prices high. The famed dot com is going nowhere yet.
Your right there are going to be masses of issues within the details – ICANN hasn’t or doesn’t want to work theses issues through, their one size fits all approach might be good for ICANN and it’s contracted parties but it’s a missed opportunity to use the DNS for the wider public good.
Here are a few starter issues with .brand’s Why ICANN Isn’t Being Very Sensible: Part I – .brands
Or for example .places.
Place names are going to be an opportunity for sharp salesmen.
Many places are likely to prove too small to support a critical mass of names to get the TLD mind-share, this isn’t going to be helped by the big corporations not wanting to build a website for each place they have an outlet in bigcorp.com/town1 bigcorp/town2…. It is much easier to manage than corp.town1 corp.town2…. And many multiples often only need and address, map and open times for each store.
This leaves small local business and local people, without mindshare name.town1 is no better than nametown1.com because not many people if anyone is likely to try and guess such .town1 addresses in the address bar.
In the United States .us hasn’t seen great growth so one has to wonder how many .cities will even survive beyond launch fever, speculation and defensive registrations.
Let’s hope too many local governments don’t end up committing hard earned funds from local tax payers to sharp salesmen’s schemes.
wow seems like a lot of money just to drop the .com , i’ll be ready for the aussie brawl over names…