In an article published by itbusiness.ca, the CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), Byron Holland said that 50 percent of all new gTLD’s will go out of business in 2-3 years.
“It’s going to dramatically impact the Canadian domain space one way or the other”
“We assume if you add 500 or 1,000 new TLDs to the Internet landscape, we will definitely be up against a more competitive environment.”
“Just like any other private business starting up, all these new TLDs will have a 50 per cent chance of going out of business in two or three years,” Holland says. “That’s going to be somewhat disquieting to people.”
The one fact that the CEO of CIRA didn’t chat about or even recognize is that as part of the process all new gTLD operators have to have 3 years of operating expenses in the bank in escrow or have a letter of credit for that amount issued to ICANN
Personally I have no doubt that there will be new gTLD’s that will fail.
I think 50% is a extremely high percentage especially since there will be a lot of .Brands which are not applying as a for profit registry and many Geographic areas where the change for failure is pretty low.
Still an interesting read
He didn’t say that – he said that they would be as likely to fail as any other business.
The headline you chose and the one they chose is both misleading and inflammatory
Regards
Michele
Am going to send him flowers and chocolate for coming out to tell the truth
Dot com is KING
dot whatever …all BS
.com king of garbage
The smart money is being REFUNDED as you speak
Are Withdrawn gTLDs (aka wTLDs) counted in the failures ?
Michele
The quote is:
“”Just like any other private business starting up, all these new TLDs will have a 50 per cent chance of going out of business in two or three years””
Yesterday the domainer world went crazy went Juan Calle mentioned the words cybersquatter and domainer in the same sentence.
I think the quote makes the headline accurate and if the CEO of CIRA didn’t mean what he said they he should have chosen his words more carefully
good these meatballs need to loose 185K and get beat over the head.
everybody will straighented right out. I’ve worked for cd cd companies,maintance contractors,framing cos. they had all the answers
and every one went out of business they fell right in line.And not only that when you throw it up to thier face they get angry and theres not where to run to and hide.The lesson is learned the hard way.
and thats exactly what needs to happen in the tld space.
Anyone want to bet that ICANN will never report on the gTLD Applicants they never published in 2000 ?
Anyone want to bet that ICANN will never report on the gTLD Applicants they never published in 2012 ?
You will get the ICANN subset where ALL gTLDs are a “success”.
The.Community always operates the successful stuff – they kill off anything that does not meet their needs.
I agree that a lot of .brands will keep their extensions even if not profitable.
However, for all non .brand extensions, we should expect to see what happens in the rest of the world… 9 out of 10 business fail within their first 2 years. Granted gTLD applicants have put a lot of money into it (at least $185,000) and that probably shows a little more investment / aversion to risk than your average mom and pop business.
Still I would hate to stake a claim on a .golf extension when you might have to re-brand in 5 years because the extension becomes obsolete.
I think it is fair to assume more than 50% of non .brand gTLDs will be having issues in 5 years time.
Rumor:
Annual carrying costs for gTLD’s could exceed $5 million per year, per gTLD by the year 2020. This will pay for lots of trips for ICAN’T executives.
actually, the costs of “running a registry” are very small. you could give names away for free. the cost is just some computers, an internet connection and some free software.
if the content offered on sites found through your registry is really good, there’s nothing to stop network admins from adding you to the root they use.
it’s common for network admins to filter out certain sites by removing them from their dns. ask opendns.
but if users want certain sites, and the content offered by those sites is of value and not objectionable to anyone (no one has any reason to try to take them down), then it stands to reason admins can add those tld’s to their dns roots.
the simple fact is user demand trumps all else. content matters (look at the sales pitches of all these new gtld wannabes: they want to try to exercise quality control on the content of websites). in the end, content is more important than “domain names”.
and the total cost of this? zero, save for the expenses mentioned in the first sentence.
now if you are trying to do things exactly as icann has done them (monkey see, monkey do), if you are trying to maintain command and control over the whole process and trying to make money for nothing (domain names costs nothing to create), then sure there are more costs.
a few that come to mind:
legal costs. because making money relies on being able to let people infringe trademarks (hello domainers). how are you going to appease the trademark lobby?
server costs. because kids with scripts are going to try to “ddos” you since you have tried to centralise the system, creating an easy target.
the costs of all the meetings all over the world. who is going to pay for that? your moderately successful tech consulting business won’t. because it’s entirely unjustified.
icann needs to try to maintain their artificial “authority” over internet addressing and web navigation. but this new gtld scheme is only bringing more attention to their lack of competence and ultimately their lack of authority.
this whole thing is going to drive up the value of the dot com registry. as so many have said. create confusion and it will drive smart people toward certainty. com has the content. not just “talk of content”. actual content.
Profit and loss seems turned on its head when you get to the huge corp kinda level. JPM lost $2bn yesterday, sure the CEO didnt exactly look very happy but you can bet he’ll be having tea and crumpets anyway 🙂
Byron’s an optimist. Most new TLDs will utterly flop.
What happens to people who’ve registered domains in these failed/abandoned extensions and built websites on them? Does ICANN then take over management of the zone, or does the ground just open up under your website and the entire top level domain vanishes into thin air?
I’m assuming this is addressed, somewhere in the fine print?
If there aren’t any policies in place to manage this kind of tail risk, that is
a) incredibly retarded and
b) very well may be one of the strongest arguments against actually using one for meaningful eCommerce.
If SuperDuperTLD Holdings LLC/PLC/AG is awarded dot-awesome and I decide to build my web presence there, what happens to dot-awesome when the managing company goes the way of Registerfly?
@L i want to know this too
“what happens to dot-awesome when the managing company goes the way”
People getting their DNS feed via Google’s 8.8.8.8 may not see any TLDs disappear.
People getting their DNS feed via ___________ may not see any TLDs disappear.
There are other solutions but this forum is not the place to air those.
just half? 99% will fail!
“this is not the place to air those”
so what is the place?
because it sounds like they should be aired.
businesses that use the web need to understand an IP address is all you need for your clients to reach you on the web, or by email.
names, while originally a nice convenience, are now an icann game. we’re all overpaying. we’re all being mislead. businesses should be ousted from using the web because of icann’s domain name games.
the web is a public resource.
s/should/should not/
New gtlds are dead