I moderated a panel on from the Dot Nxt conference yesterday and asked the panel how much they predicted the highest price of a auction new gTLD extension would go for.
As you may know if more than one application is received for the same string, the string maybe awarded to the high bidder in an auction.
The panel was entitled “Show Me The Money” and the panelist certaily thought the highest price paid in an auction will run into the 8 figures.
The panelist were; John Matson the COO of Architelos.com, Jose Rasco Managing Director at Straat Investments, which is the holding company for .CO Internet, Adrian Kinderis CEO and co founder of AusRegistry International, and Steve DelBianco Executive Director of NetChoice
The panelists predictions ranged from $20 Million – $50 Million.
$50 Million for a gTLD extension?
I can say I have sat with several applicants who indicated they were willing, ready and able to spend up to $10M for the string of their choice, so I certainly think $20M-$25M is possible.
So I’m opening up the poll to see what you think.
What will be the highest auction of a gTLD.
You can make your selection on the right and any comments below.
Early money is always speculative. The only difference between tech and everything else is that the upside is so huge in tech, sane risk models aren’t ever applied… so, $20mm upfront for a TLD. If that TLD ‘takes’ and the .com paradigm really does shift over the next 10, 15, 20 years, it’s peanuts.
It will be interesting to see what happens once actual ‘value’ (or lack thereof) of these TLDs has been resolved. It’s will be all cheers or all tears. There won’t be much middle ground.
Being early here is for guys with cast iron balls.
Based on years of market research and actual registrations in .COM
the .INC top level domain is the most desirable.
It would not be surprising to see THE.Insiders orchestrate a mapping from .INC to .COM
With so many TLDs either blocked, taken, reserved, mapped, or gamed in other ways, the only thing left may be Esther Dyson’s choice .COOP
$50,000,000 for a premium TLD like .COOP should be Pocket.Change for The.Right.People
Big
There will be mulitple applications for .inc
“There will be mulitple applications for .inc”
====
Multiple should be good. Imagine them all working together to create the Registry.
That will NOT likely be allowed. Divide and conquer and collect more fees.
In 10 years they may all have it sorted out.
NOTE: .INC is at the top of the list of 4096 Anchor.Tenant TLDs
The second coming is going to be very expensive. So I can’t wait for the clowns to come and tell me how Hershey may spend Millions for .Candy but the Candy.com domain will lose value. What is the value of the dot com? The FLOOR is what any entity spends for the extension and probably a whole lot more. Time and REALITY will force business to pay more than they EVER dreamed of for GREAT dot com domains. But if not it is quite all right. The traffic on a domain like Candy.com would go thru the roof when .candy is activated. The downside may be just as exciting as the upside. Where exactly is the downside.
I can easily see $20M, $50M, and some may be surprised at an even higher number. Sony vs Apple vs ??? for .Music perhaps.
Either way, domain names are now the center of the universe and becoming more important with every passing day. The second coming is here and those that are patient are going to be rewarded beyond their dreams. JMHO!
Get ready for the 2012 version of Pets.com.
The question is how much is a big corporation willing to pay to lock in a complete and permanent monopoly over a whole Industry. If I were in the insurance or real estate business I wouldn’t mind spending couple of a billion dollars to get .insurance or .realestate (or the many of the other top keywords that are in the same caliber).
Perhaps that’s why so many ICANN employees are leaving (or have already left) to become consultants to private companies. It will be a while before people can realize the full scope and magnitude of the new gTLDs, and by then this whale is all carved up and divided amongst those who have the most money and the best insider connections, which is a tragedy in the making.
–
I wonder if a well known company will put in multiple bids on TLDs they know other people will want with the primary intention of withdrawing from any auction for a small fee of course?
@Rick Schwartz:
Agreed. If anyone owns the dotCom version of a new TLD it’s going to be tantamount to winning the lottery.
“tell me how _____ may spend Millions for .Candy but the Candy.com domain will lose value”
====
There is DNS edge software (ready to launch) that will USE Candy.com to locate .CANDY -> _____ would be wise to also buy CANDY.COM to handle the traffic.
ICANN of course plans to spend years selling .CANDY in their largely irrelevant gold-plated servers. They do not have the % reach IANA had in 1998. That will
drop like a stone as the chaos of new TLDs continues. DNS WW3 is starting.
If the EARTH survives past 2012 – the Internet will be a different place.
@ojohn
All of us GeoDomain owners are still waiting for dotTravel to “lock up and monopolize” our industry 🙂
“If anyone owns the dotCom version of a new TLD it’s going to be tantamount to winning the lottery”
===
It should not be hard to scroll through ALL of the 3 Letter TLD Anchor.Tenants
.INC will be located via INC.COM
If people change the open-source DNS software, the mapping algorithms widely used will change. Nearly 100% of the DNS that matters currently goes thru a
tiny piece of software (ICANN does not control).
“All of us GeoDomain owners are still waiting…”
====
GeoDomains for cities and regions have to be cautious. Owning the .COM may not be able to stop the other DNS paths to consumers.
Spending $185,000 for each of the popular GeoDomains plus defending them in auctions could get very very expensive.
THE.Insiders appear to be determined to destroy .COM
@David
You never know when the floodgates of the new gTLDs are opened it might breathe new life in some of the previously unknown gTLDs such as .travel or .jobs , whoever owns these should consider themselves very lucky because they don’t have to fight a hundred other companies over them in the auctions now.
–
“when the floodgates of the new gTLDs are opened it might breathe new life in some of the previously unknown gTLDs”
===
Careful, those OLD TLDs are likely sTLDs (Sponsored) like .XXX
Even though computers do not know sponsored from generic, you can bet there will
be people wanting RE-BIDs for ALL of the OLD TLDs.
The .US TLD should be up for RE-BID soon, and .ORG
The Monetized Domain Platform could have a tough time vs the FREE DNS (Coming)
TLDs like .JOBS may have to launch a specialized walled-garden Service.Oriented.Platform to survive. Just selling sub-domains may not cut it.
@Rick
I remember reading in one of your blog posts that you consider yourself a businessman first and a domainer second, as a good businessman would you rather have candy.com or .candy assuming that you could only afford to get one.
–
@ojohn
Correct, but I stand by my belief that there is ZERO public demand for these names. And I predict here is how it will all play out:
2012: Lots of “Death of dotCom?” stories. Intense bidding for certain new gTLDs.
2013: New gTLDs launched with fantastic promotion. Super Bowl ads, etc.
2014: The curtain falls. Most fail when renewals plummet and funding drys up. In desperation, gTLDs lower their standards and sell names to anyone. Russian spammers through huge parties. DotCom becomes official gold standard and values soar, trademark attorneys are joyous and ICANN staff is last seen bundled in the trunks of cars on PCH.
One has to realize that we’ve never witnessed a TLD going under. And it’s going to scare the daylights out of anyone not branded with dotCom, Org, Net or a ccTLD.
and some of you still don’t think
the value of .com is not headed south of mexico
shame on you
foolish people
.INC will auction north of $100,000,000
All this money going into right of the dot changes the playing field.
The only certainty is change.
And
.Co
would have been worth $Billions at any auction.
@David
If a company can afford to pay millions of dollars for a new gTLD I doubt that they are counting on selling domains (or renewals) to recoup their investment, they might not even make their gTLD open to the public and just keep it as a means of wildcarding all second level domain searches that relate to their perspective Industry.
–
@ojohn
From your mouth to God’s ear 🙂
David
If your talking about an extension failing as is going out of business your timeline is impossiible.
For one as part of the application process the winning applicant has to put 3 years of operating expenses in escrow or have a letter of credit that insures at least 3 years.
Any good generic is going to get muliplle apps & won’t go live until 2013 at the soonest
“One has to realize that we’ve never witnessed a TLD going under”
====
Technically, that is not true. There have been some (Ham.Handed) Removals
The losers were so small (or remote from USA) their voices were not heard.
For anyone knows, they are still there. ICANN (IANA) just does not broadcast them any more.
In an automated system, peer-2-peer computers do all the changes, not lawyers.
Some of the biggest and best companies will own the best extensions and
you can certainly bet they will
advertise and PR the daylights out of their extension.
They would not be investing
$20,000,000 – $100,000,000
if they did not have
$Billions to advertise and market.
@david
2014 – interesting prediction coincidently also the last chance for exercising share options for some.
Re: “The .com FLOOR is what any entity spends for the extension” “Where exactly is the downside.” “winning the lottery”
There are some TLDs that I would pay substantially more for than their .com counterparts.
Some .coms may benefit but for others the effects are unclear. If the TLD flops then little impact on .com. If the TLD is a roaring success and members of a community feel considerable loyalty towards it, then where once you had a ‘category-killer’ .com, now you have a domain that undeveloped gets much more traffic, but developed faces more competition and less loyalty.
“I stand by my belief that there is ZERO public demand for these names. And I predict…”
=====
1. There is demand for more variety and SHORT names.
2. There is demand for FREE.stuff << .stuff?
3. The average domainer (and even the domain czars) do not know what is coming – AND no one can predict how the public or governments will react
The DNS is a small trivial part of the future Service.Oriented.Architecture
People don't care if The.Father.of.the.Internet worked for DARPA.
They just want their .MTV and .SEX
2012: Lots of “Death of dotCom?” stories. Intense bidding for certain new gTLDs.
2013: New gTLDs launched with fantastic promotion. Super Bowl ads, etc.
2014: The curtain falls. Most fail when renewals plummet and funding drys up. In desperation, gTLDs lower their standards and sell names to anyone. Russian spammers through huge parties. DotCom becomes official gold standard and values soar, trademark attorneys are joyous and ICANN staff is last seen bundled in the trunks of cars on PCH.
——
I think this is pretty likely, too.
The real test won’t be what domainers do or what the TLD investors do as far as promoting it. Show me a meaningful internet application built from the ground up on a .new that goes on to become part of the internet furniture (or a flood of internet applications rebranding to .them), then it’s a ballgame. Until that time, the existing infrastructure is built around .com and that has a huge implication.
Americans certainly aren’t open to this kind of change.
There’s a reason we still don’t give a shit about soccer.
In the new right of the dot age
.Co
will be the clear winner
superseding .com
get those good .Co s while you still can.
@MHB
I know that, too. But I have no doubt that, regardless of ICANN’s insistence on anything (has anything ever stopped a business from closing shop?), some of these TLDs will estimate future revenues based on initial registrations and burn through funding at an accelerated rate. Mark my words, in 2014 you will see failures – regardless of what “insurances” ICANN has put in place.
@Robert Cline:
Word of advice – never find yourself in a lifeboat filled with dotCom owners.
@David J C
WTF!!
Do not neglect me of a live saving lifeboat
just because I speak the truth.
“it is not a sin to call a dead man dead.”
Cline, I don’t think you realize what a total fucking clown you’ve become.
In your own mind, you’re on some Quixotic mission to convince the world about a new era with .co, yet you- personally- have unwittingly become an blinking neon icon of the worst aspects we see with every “new TLD Mania”.
Either that, or you’re a psy-ops genius and are doing this because you really dislike .co and want to sabotage it- you understand that by creating this satirical character that’s so over the top, you’re illuminating every failed principle that causes people to lose money with new TLDs….
… but I’m betting on the former.
“Some of the biggest and best companies will own the best extensions”
===
Some of the biggest and best companies will own the best PLATFORMS
Have you looked at how much cash (liquid assets) Apple and CISCO have ?
Again, Microsoft is cutting deals with CHINA, as in the Country.
Have you looked at the DNS shipping in most motherboards from China ?
What about the cell-phones ? They ship with DNS code installed.
DNS World War 3 is just getting started. Get out your 3D glasses.
I think the way
@David J C
thinks is typical of how these heavily invested in .com mers think.
Just if I speak the way they want it to be. essentially be ingratiating that
the reality will change and the stars will line with the past.
No it will not.
What good will it do if I tell you the sky is red when it is not.
so don’t overthrow the messenger from the lifeboat
@Robert Cline
When the people at dotCO wish (pray) that you would stop with the hyperbole you think you would get a clue.
And, yes, I would still pull you into the lifeboat, but I would have my hands full protecting you from becoming shark bait.
if all TLDs will be bid and re-bid, within few years, all them will be owned by an half dozen big IT companies (FB, MS, G, etc.)
if all TLDs will be bid and re-bid, within few years, all them will be owned by an half dozen big IT companies
@David J C
Now I’ve convinced you of your madness of throwing my good soul over of all things a live saving lifeboat by a fellow human. and you blame it on the sharks.
Actually this is pure amusement and enjoyment for me.
I get to speak my mind.
I speak plainly. I don’t mince my words and write long coagulated prose like some of you.
Some of you want to take the task of censoring me.
trying to shut me up and take away people’s Bill of Rights.
Speaking plainly however painful
can be looked as heroic
“if all TLDs will be bid and re-bid, within few years, all them will be owned by an half dozen big IT companies”
=====
That may be the case for Monetized TLDs using the 1980s Client-Server DNS Platform (which is not the true Internet Architecture)
The new (coming) Peer-2-Peer DNS is not Client-Server and will not have central colos (i.e. gold-plated IT companies). It is impossible to turn it off or control it.
There is no such think as a bid or re-bid. All of the owners run the system.
“but the Candy.com domain will lose value. ”
You are the clown. A liar clown too. Show us the contract where it shows the real price, not the one you said.
Looks like Candy.com is a major failure in traffic, they barely get 2-3000 people a day.
Candy.com sale price of $3,000,000 plus % of sales
buyer got shafted by Ricky Schwartzy
This clearly proves the height of the .com bubble.
The future is uncertain so it doesn’t hurt for everyone to keep a few lifeboats close by.
This is not domainer versus domainer
This is more like big business versus domainers
–
I’m going to get
Robert.candy
my.candy
love.candy
chocolate.candy
Candy.com new value $8
Castillo’s a nice guy.
I wouldn’t pull you back in the hypothetical life boat.
I’d dump your ass over the side.
“I can say I have sat with several applicants who indicated they were willing, ready and able to spend up to $10M for the string of their choice, so I certainly think $20M-$25M is possible.”
====
It is sort of surprising that {{ Serious Applicants }} are not on-board with the leading edge of DNS. They could lose millions chasing rainbows.
Just prior to the founding of ICANN there were meetings with serious players able to make DNS changes to the platform(s). They were derailed by ICANN founders who promised (lied) about the plans to allow competition.
{{ Serious Applicants }} should consider serious meetings with major ISPs and DNS Platform operators.
Ricky Slick Schawzty and their likes have
hoodwinked too many people.
I hope many of them will ask for a refund.
“Candy.com sale price of $3,000,000 plus % of sales buyer got shafted by Ricky Schwartzy”
More like we got lied to by Ricky Schwartzy.
David,
I think you are spot on in your analysis and prediction of the way the new gtlds will play out. In particular , I think your skepticism about the need/demand for the gtlds.
The gtlds are going to cause major confusion. I think .com values will benefit, as you predict. If any single extension is going to benefit most, I think it is probably .net. .Net values are relatively depressed presently, but will rebound once it becomes a clear 2nd or 3rd best extension in a few years.
a dotnxt revolution is a foot.
I can smell it.
people like Ricky Schwarzty and the like will get tarred and feathered
in this revolution.
the aristocracy aways get beheaded or some thing really bad like this seem to happen
when the .candy.com owner learns that their $3,000,000 investment is really worth $8.
back to the question…
…
“What will be the highest auction of a gTLD”
====
.ORG currently has about 10,000,000 domains with revenue of ? $80,000,000 ?
ISOC gets a cut (for no reason) of $26,000,000
The Annual Profit on Non.Profit .ORG should raise any auction bids
When is .ORG re-bid, auctioned ?….or do people prefer the new DNS software just redirects it ? to Peer-2-Peer ?
would you sleep well knowing that you’ve taken someone’s hard earned $3,000,000 on a $8 domain.
hhhmmm
stress can cut your life short.
Our mayor in our city was caught red handed visiting gay dating sites from his office and within 1 year he crocked. I kid you not.
Jothan Frakes gave a presentation several years ago where he said he knew of 11 different interested potential applicants for .WEB. And, looking at pre registration requests at United Domains it probably has the best potential for a new super generic. It could go for a lot of money. But, most the panel and experts don’t think many contention sets will be resolved at auction. Rather, power plays and deals will be made. Applicants will be intimidated by, bought out or absorbed by the ultimate winner, which could be a cooperative formed by the most well funded applicants.
An applicant would need to be HIGHLY motivated to have ABOLUTE CONTROL over a string to opt for a $20 – 50 million auction bid. And, that applicant would have to be up against ANOTHER highly motivated applicant to drive the bids up that high, without working out some sort of compromise. Something like this could possibly occur in highly valuable niche TLD, like .insurance, .games .loan, .poker, .realty – where the applicant is looking at the possibility of controlling a vertical TLD namespace in their industry.
Nobody knows, but IF these TLDs begin to see any significant SEO benefit, they would be worth hundreds of millions $$.
But the risk is great, as was mentioned during the session, the money you would spend at auction would be much better served in a marketing effort than handing over to ICANN.
Don’t think too many auctions will occur but there will be some exciting times post May 1 2012 when applications are made public and ‘DotDomainia’ officially starts.
.WEB – the ultimate winner, which could be a cooperative formed by the most well funded applicants.”
=====
Why would they fool with .WEB when they can take .ORG with an existing base of 10,000,000 domains ?
Is ICANN.ORG trying to distract people away from the obvious low-hanging fruit?
Cutting the ISOC out is an instant $26,000,000 savings.
Here will be the new order of Internet Hierarchy:
.Co
.com
.INC
.WEB
.Net
.Org
.De
.Eu
.
.
.
@Robert Cline
Seriously… where do you come up with these things? Sometimes I think you enjoy pulling things out of your butt.
Just my thoughts.
Cheers
David
To be clear I’m not saying there won’t be gTLD’s that will fail, there absolutely will.
Just like for the next 1,000 restaurants to open in the US a fair percentage will fail or like any other business.
At the end of the day running a registry is running a business.
But I don’t see a new gTLD registry that applies in 2012 failing and closing up shop in 2014.
Let’s have a gentleman’s wager of a bottle of Blue on it.
Robert
Can you tell me what the hell Rick Schwartz or the sale of candy.com has to do with the topic of the post?
BTW can I have your address.
I have a pretty big bandwidth bill to send you for the last 1+ worth of comments
Tom
Is correct the panel didn’t think a lot of extensions would go to auction, but would be resolved by some agreement of the applicants.
Of course this mind set in and of itself is going to cause game playing at the applicant level but that is another post for another day
@MHB
oh come on
I was only responding to someone else’s candy.com post.
This site does have something like an entertainment feel disclaimer right ?
Sometimes I wonder if some idiots take things said here too seriously.
I like posting while I am working on the other half of my 17′ laptop.
Just like for the next 1,000 restaurants to open in the US a fair percentage will fail or like any other business.
If I want a burger or a steak I can go to another restaurant if my usual one fails.
If I’ve bought a second level domain for my business and my TLD fails that’s much more serious, because I need to get new branding, new signing, update all my systems and let all of my existing customers and suppliers know my new website and new email addresses.
It never has been clear why a .ORG (as in ICANN or ISOC .ORG) would be getting a cut of .COM
apparently (wink wink) Verisign likes the hand-shake .COM deal
What would .COM as a gTLD bring at auction ?
or, why auction .ORG or .COM when a new DNS Plaform can slide in and take them one name at a time, the old-fashioned way…
serving 10,000,000 .ORG customers seems like a good business, even if the wholesale price is cut in half
Maybe a dumb question for @Rick Schwartz or anyone.
How exactly does the owner of candy.com, or NYC.com benefit when the .CANDY or .NYC TLDs go live?
how does traffic for that specific domain go through the roof?
@Tom G
exactly
you understand me.
Maybe a dumb question for @Rick Schwartz or anyone.
How exactly does the owner of candy.com, or NYC.com benefit when the .CANDY or .NYC TLDs go live?
how does traffic for that specific domain go through the roof?
No disrespect but if you don’t know the answer to that question at this stage of the game you need to have a long hard look before you think of investing in new gTLDs.
GPM
That is one of the reasons ICANN is requiring applicants have funding to operate for three years ongoing so that customers would have plenty of time to move to something else in the case of a failed extension that no other company would come in and agree to take over
Robert
That’s fine the 1st time but a continuous series of comments about something not related to the topic of the post is over the top
@MBH – 3 years is a start but the TLD is so intrinsic to everything in a business ICANN shouldn’t be approving gTLDs which are more likely to fail. The last thing the industry needs is sharp suited salesmen pushing a series of pump and dump TLDs.
@gpmgroup
@gpmgroup
I get it, people add .com and it redirects.
Thing is, people are going to stop doing that when they realize it never takes them where they want to go.
@MHB:
Bottle of Blue it is, Mike. I wager by December 31, 2014 at least one of the new gTLDs goes the way of the Pets.com sock puppet (of course, this is assuming the current schedule of launch stays as is).
“The panelists predictions ranged from $20 Million – $50 Million.
$50 Million for a gTLD extension?
I can say I have sat with several applicants who indicated they were willing, ready and able to spend up to $10M for the string of their choice, so I certainly think $20M-$25M is possible.”
So with these huge numbers being predicted, how does ICANN expect this to be “revenue netural”?
It was an obvious cash grab from the first.
Now members who helped this pass will be entering the private industry in an obvious conflict of interest out of their own personal interest….It is already happening.
Brad
@Brad
If the auctions go into the millions of dollars, perhaps the amounts over the cost of the new gTLD program for ICANN should go for humanitarian and global causes.
–
“It was an obvious cash grab from the first.”
====
Consider the total cash-flow since 1998 and all of the companies prevented from entry into the Top Level Domain game.
Where has all YOUR money gone ? what has it funded ?
How has ICANN and ISOC pulled that off ?
And what’s 10% of that budget for marketing strategy and assistance? Right of the dot, right idea, right time indeed.
Brad
I have called out ICANN out on this as many have done
You’re right that the budget does not have ANY amount as coming in for auctions, which is just plain silly & yes ICANN will have after the 1st round hundreds of millions in the bank
ICANN has become money making machine. Kudos to them!!
You guys are thinking like domainers…you guys don’t even count…you guys are .00000001 percent of the world population who uses the internet.
Rick Schwartz has been preaching this quote for years…hope you have learned it by now!
“When you see John Jones through John Jones eyes, you will sell John Jones what John Jones buys”
and your average John Jones is going to be confused and run to GOOGLE….no more type in traffic!!!
MARK THIS POST!!!
Shows how much speculative money there is vs. what will actually put food on the table. i.e. salivating over being the new king vs. good business and pulling out a few good .com’s and making a boatload.
Good God.
Take any gTLD that can generate a million registrations (.web certainly can) and multiply by $6 or more per name for the wholesale price, you start to get an idea of what the value might be.
@Anunt – For the time being there will be a “leak” as Rick calls it to the .com.
However, more people will resort to search engines due to confusion, and not knowing what is a scam site and what is not.
They will assume that if a specific site is # 1 in search then they are legit. The value of domains in search engines as a major factor will go down. The solution is elsewhere.
@Abe
“more people will resort to search engines due to confusion, ”
Actually – more people will resort to typing in the intuitive .com in the command line due to confusion.
For myself I invest in .com’s so that I do not have to lick SEO anal cavity
In 1998, ICANN was formed to move an academic (IANA) into a corporate structure. That was supposed to help end the academic run-arounds and the back-room-deals.
If you were to read archives closely from 1998, the idea was also to use ICANN as a Cheerleader, as a vehicle to pull people into the platform. That is how some
of the legal loop-holes emerged, Proof.of.Concept is a big one.
Unfortunately, many
stuffed suits stepped in and redefined the platform and placed themselves into the
cash-flow streams. Despite their back-room-deal-making system, people were
still pulled into the platform. Some of the academics have been diluted.
The stuffed suits imposed a Client-Server (Cntralized Registry) model. They
now plan to pull more (new blood) into their MLM scheme. There is a FALSE
presumption that the incumbents somehow “own” the legacy name.spaces.
.COM .ORG .NET are cash cows. Who really owns .ORG ?
In parallel with the inflated auctions and cyberspace grabs, there is a need
to RELAUNCH .COM .NET and .ORG with new companies. The Peer-2-Peer
DNS model will be used. No auctions or grabs are required.
While noobs are distracted by the ICANN Cheerleaders with new TLDs and
auctions and endless debates and conflicts, the Smart.Money will be…..
Selling to the Market…
It will be interesting RE-Registering 75,000+ .COM domains to ensure they
are in the P2P DNS. Ten million .ORG owners are waiting to be serviced.
Why waste time and money on ICANN’s latest game for noobs?
Why be a pawn in ICANN’s game ?
You can own part of the .COM Registry and laugh all the way to the bank with ICANN and Verisign. They do not have exclusive rights to the 80+ million
.COM Registrants. You can service those Registrants.
DEAR MBH
PLEASE BAN Robert Cline FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
HE RUINS EVERY COMMENT THREAD and I’m SURE you are losing readers. Readers that might ADD to the conversation. After years I’m over reading the comments on this blog, always the same illogical arguments that throw everyone and everything OFFTOPIC. Worst trolls ever.
If someone has such an agenda to take all your stuff offtopic, they might like to go and create their OWN COMMUNITY TO RUIN.
I can’t be alone in being sick of it.
PLEASE BAN THE CRAP!
A robot can be programmed to spout more logical statements, or maybe he is a SPAM BOT (no, seriously)!
I hear Kevin Ham is going after .ink
I think there is a huge difference from some years ago and now, some years ago I would have gladly paid millions to get .web.
But its a completely different environment now, when 50,100 or more generic extensions will come to the market at the very same time.
I think its now worth much less then it used to be.
“I think there is a huge difference from some years ago and now…”
====
Years ago, it was a 5 minute operation to add a new Top Level Domain with a phone call to the IANA – Some people did that and they continue to operate under
the radar – They have avoided RE-BIDs
Now you have to Grease all the right people’s palms and stroke their egos and scratch their backs and smooze their cronies and then THEY tax you after you
have paid them to “like you”.