In an interview with iTWire, ICANN CEO, Paul Twomey, said that he expects ICANN to start accepting application for the new gTLD”s by mid 2009.”
Aside from restrictions in relation to trademarks, intellectual property rights, potentially confusing names like .kom and some character strings that will cause problems for the Internet’s name servers, like .1234, Twomey said names would be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Names can be up to 64 roman characters in length, opening up the possibility of any company registering its brand as a gTLD. Twomey said he also expected generic names like .shop, and .sales to be popular, but added, “it is hard for us to know, because it has now got to the stage where people are keeping quiet about their plans.”
Even with a price set of $185,000 per application, Twomey stressed that this was not intended to make profit for ICANN.
“We had to make sure that [applicants for the new gTLDs] were not being subsidised by existing top level registrants. So we decided the process should be cost neutral and we put a lot of work into determining what it should be.”
Twomey said he did not expect a domain name like rush for the new gTLDs.
“We are not expected tens of thousands – this is not like getting a domain name.”
Wow I had been thinking that there would be hundreds of new domain extension, but Twomey in saying he does not expect “ten’s of thousands” application, might be thinking he is going to get thousands of applications.
The unanswered question is what the effect of hundreds, maybe thousands of new extensions will have on existing domain names.
If if we get ‘only’ hundreds the .com will be diluted IF the new extension is owned by major players like Google, Ebay, MS etc
Anthony:
I don’t agree. No legitimate business is going to want a Google or eBay extension. They would never want to be an appendage of another business.
PS:
To get a better assessment of where this is going, Domainers should consider the plight of dotTravel. No one would argue, in theory, that Travel is not a great extension. However, the reality turned out to be far different.
Agree. .com is well positioned to rise above the noise even more than it does now amongst .travel, .biz, .cc, .pro, .tv, .mobi, .ws, dozens of other .whatevers. Hundreds of new vTlds each with their OWN rules, prices, etc will inevitably confuse consumers and make the .com star shine even brighter than it does now making .com the default counter-confusion Tld. Man, if I were the .com owner of a generic name, I would hope and pray a tld gets established for that name–that would bring in tons of free traffic. (One has to ask, “did .travel, arguably one of the top keywords possible, increase or decrease the value and traffic of travel.com?” Its a safe bet to say despite the Tld’s failure, the extension ended up mostly likely improving the value and traffic of travel.com) Assuming of course the tld catches on at all which might be a real stretch. Can anyone name a .whatever commercial end-user success story besides .com now? If there are but a few or even no such successes, it may not be rational to believe hundreds or thousands more (of the same) would dilute the .com brand. Rather, the opposite is more likely to happen IMHO.
Initially, I believe there will be mass confusion when all of these vanity TLDs are released and you’ll have the usual plethora of talking heads prophesizing that is the end of dotCom, the end of CCtlds, etc, etc.
However, we’re dealing with the masses here and the herd does not run in your direction simply because you shout out your own name.
For that reason, I believe the long term effect will be a major increase in the value of dotCom names because one of the most important attempted strategies with these TLDs will be branding. Some, with millions of dollars in promotion, may succeed in stamping their TLD into the public’s consciousness, but the vast majority will not.
The upside for us is that it will then become plainly obvious to Madison Avenue and Corporate America that is it would be far easier (and far less expensive) to pony up and buy a mega dotCom.
Well said Mr. Costello,
Well said.
Ed – Michigan
David is correct; and a simple equation illustrates this well:
Domain Confusion = .Com Comfort & Familiarity
ps Off topic; but I also want to take a moment to a “Thanksgiving moment” to thank Michael for all the time and hard work he puts in to this blog.
I don’t know how you and all the other leading domain bloggers do it; but I’m certainly glad, and thankful; that you do.
Interesting response – lets see what new domain ext will come out of the bag.
.asia domain name ext. are search engine friendly
Steve
Thanks for your kind words and holiday wishes.
Best to you and your family.
Mike
David
I agree the more the merrier at this point.
The more new extension the better .com will be.
50 new highly targeted extension would work.
1,000 new extension will cause huge confusion.
The only downside maybe, will this mass confusion that we all agree will occur on the released of many hundreds or thousands of new extensions, result in less direct navigation and more usage of search engines?
I think that is a real possibility.
This is a spectacular time to start buying up as many LLL.com and generic.com’s as you possibly can. The market is way down right now. If one of your LLL.com’s becomes an actual gTLD you are going to have one heck of a lot of traffic. Another thing Thats I would recommend doing is buying Google’s stock. This confusion is going to help Google tremendously, and with the stock price at only 40% of last years highs, this is a great time to stock up.
I will say that this will hurt in a bit way the Tlds’s like .tv, .info, .us, .travel, .mobi in a very big way. .com’s will flourish.
I’m just glad the dot com is as strong as it is, there is very little chance any of those TLDs will become the new standard and even come close to the monstrosity of dot com.
Also, this new TLD seems like an unnecessary expense for “major brands” that most likely already have a strong presence on the web. Why would ICANN assume the new registrations will come from companies and not domainers trying to make a buck.
Happy Thanks Giving to all of you.
Daniel
In reference to Twomey: “Even with a price set of $185,000 per application, Twomey stressed that this was not intended to make profit for ICANN.
Comments like that insult people’s intelligence. ICANN somewhat mirror the type of corruption that has crept into government with lobbyists, special interests, pork barrel spending. Kind of an arrogant indifference to common sense approaches and concerns.
I notice that some ICANN reps have a knack for “talking around” a core issue without directly addressing it. This is the strategy adopted by politicians, CEO’s, and others with a suspect agenda.
Let’s hear Twomey quoted as saying “We are taking a serious second look at the new tld proposal. It has come to our attention that the introduction of unlimited new tld’s could actually pose serious problems to the organization of the internet and potentially hurt thousands of companies via unprecedented TM infringement”.
David
.travel is going to be relaunched, lifting the restrictions which doomed the extension from the initial launch.
Most importantly anyone will be able to own .travel domains, not just travel agents.
Look for some of the best of the .travel domains to be auctioned off at DomainFest in January.
After that auction we may get a much better idea of where that, and the new extensions are heading
Mike:
I don’t think there will be anyone breaking down doors to buy dotTravel.
Except in some countries with their respective CCtlds, the only TLD that will ever get direct navigation is dotCom. These future vanity TLDs will be entirely search engine independant.
Many people argue that, eventually, everybody will search for names – so why does the TLD matter?
The reason the TLD matters is not the initial search. It matters the 2nd time someone tries to remember the domain name of your business. And as any Marketing 101 student will tell you, this is the essence of branding.
Businesses build based on repeat customers. No business should ever have to depend on the public remembering their company’s domain name based upon their search engine ranking.