In yet another story from Paul Sloan on the new gTLD space, writing for Cnet.com, Mr. Sloan looked at the 101 new gTLD applications that Google filed for under the registry it set up, Charleston Road Registry and asks will Google change the domain name industry by giving domains ending in .Home or .Web or .Shop for free.
“The question is how Google would sell domain names to the public.”
“Google has long been an ICANN accredited registrar, which gives it the license to sell names to the consumers. But it has never done this. Instead, it has always referred customers to partners, such as Go Daddy and eNom, and it could very well continue to use those partners.”
“Google could start selling domain names directly to its hundreds of millions of users as well, in effect taking on Go Daddy, which did $1.4 billion in sales last year. ”
“Google could even go further and give names away free.”
The story quotes Bruce Tonkin, chief strategy officer for the domain services firm Melbourne IT; “there’s nothing in ICANN’s guidelines that would prevent Google or gTLD operator from doing this.”
“And wouldn’t that make sense for Google?”
“Sure, .com dominates, but wouldn’t plenty of people grab a .home, or .web or .shop name if they could — especially if it were free? ”
“For Google, the more Web sites out there, the better. ”
“Those are sites that Google could potentially serve ads to. They’re sites that could run Google apps. And so on.”
Its a very interesting point and should concern any domainer and any domain registrar.
What do you think, would the domain name landscape change significantly if Google were to win then give away domain names?
Would the domain registrar market change if Google went fully into the domain registrar business?
You can read the whole story here.
With nearly $50 billion in cash, Google can surely afford to give away domains for free, which could scuttle or at least wound the plans of competing applicant groups even for new gTLDs not in contention with Google’s list (especially if a condition for every free domain was that it carried Google-placed ads).
At a zero price point they would likely have to act as their own registrar, unless they are willing to pay third party registrars to handle this.
This is what happnes when King Kong gets to play by the same rules as other applicants.
Phil
“”ompeting applicant groups even for new gTLDs not in contention with Google’s list””
Forget new gTLD’s how about existing ones like .com?
Perhaps Google will eventually acquire GoDaddy …… Would’nt that be a blockbuster !?!
If they give away .web, .home and .shop for free I hope Google puts a max reg limit. That will prevent especially greedy domainers from registering thousands of domains and protect the free Google gTLD’s from turning into another parked page inferno much like .com is today.
Good point Michael.
One good thing to come out of new gTLDs would be pricing competition/pressure on VeriSign et al and their incumbent gTLDs. The overall question when it comes to Google is – At what cost?
Would be great if somebody or something put a significant dent in Verisign’s monopolistic pricing practices … cuz ICANN’t certainly hasn’t done diddly-squat about it…they’ve only enabled it.
From a domain investor’s perspective, if Google – or anyone else for that matter (e.g., Amazon) – gave away vanity gTLDs, that would be fantastic.
“Free” means that the value of the asset given has been intentionally devalued by its donor; and that would put to rest much of the apprehension that (some) domainers have about whether gTLDs will surpass dot-coms in value.
So, by default, dot-coms would increase in value just like 800 numbers did.
Also keep in mind that many of the donee(s) who receive these vanity names will eventually want to upgrade; and, as a group, they could spur bidding wars for the ‘real thing.’
Frankly, domainers would be wise to start a campaign to petition the gTLD applicants (who can afford to do so) to give away names.
Isn’t it actually going to be Google Providing the hosting of the domain which they still own and the user can put a site up to include googles adfeed but will be paying to use the domain by ongoing
hosting fees…
~Patricia – DomainBELL
“Will Google Change The Domain Industry By Giving Away Domains Like .Web & .Shop For Free”
No
– this sums it all up – these new gTLDs are an address but there will be no (or minimal) secondary market because it will be like selling your gmail email address.
So in addition to a .com owner getting solicited by tire-kickers from GoDaddy – they will now be solicited by tire-kickers who own .shop, .store, .web, .etc
.home
.shop
.web
.music
etc. etc.
will bleed to the .com’s.
Gargoogle may be the only one with deep enough pockets to fight the bleed. The names will still send traffic to the .com’s. guaranteed.
This one broad sweeping stroke–
Google will decimate two on their dusty “hit list” — domainers and registrars —
their motive — profit + goodwill
increase their Internet marketshare, while fostering good vibrations within the business community/and consumers, alike —
have an Google + profile? get 1 free .web domain
have an Adsense account? get 1 free .shop domain
buy an app on the Android platform? get 1 free .lol domain
Moreover, Google could spike their algorithm and index the .web, .shop, .lol websites higher then their .net, .store, .org, .home, .xyz counterparts
Amazon could execute similar measures —
download a book on your Kindle? get a free .book domain
buy a product on Amazon? get a free .store domain
the future does not bode well for those trafficking in The Big G’s kill zone
-Anthony
“Forget new gTLD’s how about existing ones like .com?”
Note: For now (as of 2012) you are allowed to add FREE extensions to the LEFT of TheDomains.com
XXX.TheDomains.com is FREE (for now)
so is…
Register.TheDomains.com
Enjoy those FREE names while YouCANN 🙂
Anthony –
What is a the resale (secondary market) for something that is hung out in front of you for FREE.
Sounds like years ago whe eNom (without my permission) gave me a free .INFO domain for every one of my 6,000 .COMs.
I made them cancel every one of my FREE .info domains
Google. can easily .change their algo.rythyms, making the.ir new gTL.D’s rank higher tha.n .com’s.
Goo.gle is a private. business; they can d.o whatever the.y wish.
“Free” as in “Free lawsuit”. Can’t expect a trademark.shop or whatever to be successfully defended against any other established TLD.
There are some really bizarre comments that are in just about every thread these days on this blog.
The best thing that could happen is they are free. I would love nothing more than them giving away free domains. That’s like putting the nail in the coffin.
Why? Because then they will turn into landscapes like .info which gave away free to virtually free domains and we can see what happened there : .Info is now a haven for phishing and unscrupulous operators.
It also makes the extensions look cheesy. FREE = Cheesy . Also, if you give them away for free you had better plan on doing that forever. The implied worth is zero, so to then tell them they are worth more later will be a hard sell.
The more we all talk about these new TLDs the more comfortable I feel about .com and it’s future.
Folks continue to forget basic history. Google fails at anything that requires that they communicate directly with the consumer. Google is effective only when they can utilize machines/programming to do the heavily lifting of a product.
To date they simply don’t wish to interact with the public at large. It would mean a fundamental shift in their business model as they would have to hire, or I suppose outsource, a significant support staff. It’s not out of the question for them to make such a change but I’d expect something a bit more elegant than a simple “Come and get it, they’re free” situation.
“Sounds like years ago whe eNom (without my permission) gave me a free .INFO domain for every one of my 6,000 .COMs.”
IF your .COM domains were to **become** Top Level Domains by dropping the need for .COM, you would NOT want those ?
You would not want 6,000 Top Level Domains for FREE ?
What if consumers have software that gives you 6K FREE Top Level Domains ? …would you run around to zillions of places and try to turn those off ?
“Sounds like years ago whe eNom (without my permission) gave me a free .INFO domain for every one of my 6,000 .COMs.”
====
IF the new DNS software Drops the .COM and gives you 6K FREE Top Level Domains, you would not want those ?
ZOOM –
You make a good point – a point I have stated in other threads.
When I grab and parse the inbound packet – who says the “Domain” even has to have a “.” in it ? – Why not a #, ), * or nothing instead ?
But when it comes to an intuitive brand – the “domain” ends with a .com – that is what has been programmed into the free world consumer by ACPA, UDRP and every fuckin IP lawyer on this planet – and google and everybody else combined aint going to change it.
I do not make the rukes – I play by them
Bri
@ Kellie
Are you really serious here! You better do your homework on Google.com. They have assembled the largest Mobile platform on the planet,and when ready they will employ the Android option (or Nuke option0) they have in their playbook. You have no idea what is coming.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
“Sounds like years ago whe eNom (without my permission) gave me a free .INFO domain for every one of my 6,000 .COMs.”
====
IF the new DNS software Drops the .COM and then uses the DASH for the Top Level Domain some of your “6,000 .COMs” may look like new domains.
Also, your 6,000 .COMs can be Auto-Migrated to the new Peer-2-Peer DNS without your involvement – or a simple confirmation could be required to tie your .COMs to your eWallet.
With the Peer-2-Peer DNS, your .COM domains can NOT be lost in some UDRP Kangaroo.Court. Verisign and ICANN have no control over the P2P DNS. There is no IANA Central Control Cult (C3).
The .CODE will be released on 12-12-12 with Open.Source.
Hello Michael,
By the way for those interested, Buy Google now. They are going to do a Stock split. Wisest thing they can possibly do. The markets have done a ,weak sister dump, Nasdaq will be this Bull moves leader. 6/23/12
Happy Hunting
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
“Google could even go further and give names away free.”
“…wouldn’t plenty of people grab a .home, or .web or .shop name if they could — especially if it were free? ”
“Google is effective only when they can utilize machines/programming to do the heavily lifting… ”
… and the masses ran to grab their (they should be) free domains, and gobble up the stock and everything the almighty ‘G’ dabbles/creates, oblivious to their own blind effects of the feeding and maturing of the Skynet/Big-Brother World they will have to live in, in the future. Ahhh, but to get things free..!!!
Yeah, this would be a good thing.. not.
“when ready they will employ the Android option”
Google has avoided deployment of Peer-2-Peer Software. They are heavily tied to Client-Server with their central farms of boxes.
The new Peer-2-Peer DNS .CODE will be released on 12-12-12 with Open.Source.
Consumers can then decide to use it or not.
Existing .COM users that lease from the ICANN-Verisign Client-Server farms may want to consider what Peer-2-Peer DNS does for their claims of “ownership”.
Would that individual own the domain name? Could that company pull it out from you since you don’t own it.
When you get a bad name it just becomes a liability.
I would just rather pay the 9 bucks for a secondary or third meaning word in the .com as opposed to any of these extensions except for .web.
In exchange for that domain name would that mean all your analytics would be shared with the company, including emails etc.
“But when it comes to an intuitive brand – the “domain” ends with a .com ……. google and everybody else combined aint going to change it.”
@ BrianWick
We have seen a few game hangers already, but the biggest game changer will be when all the City TLDs become operational. An average person or a small business owner will be more interested in getting their own City TLD than anything else, and those in charge of the City TLDs can charge pretty much whatever they want and people will still flock to them.
Between all the free registrations that might be given out to people by some of the big brands like google and the City TLD domains that people would happily pay for, I honestly can’t see how .com can keep its current status.
–
OJohn –
Yes – I agree with you on the City gTLDs – anything Geo will gain a certain degree of traction – but not as much a some might expect or wish for.
JoesSaloon.NYC
Lawyers.NYC
ChildrensHospital.Denver
These kind of domains will always have a value only equal to the cost of registration – Where, for example above, NYC.com and Denver.com traffic and value will go thru the roof.
Loser, IMO.
The natural evolution of a ‘free domain space’ with a generic intent TLD will be that Domain hoarders will scarf up all the expected terms. Unless they implement some ‘development depth’ protocol (which will require a ton of hiring to individually vet each registry), there’s no way to prevent it. You could slow it down, out a few barriers in its way, but domain hoarders will work around that.
They might have a plan in place to retain a shitload of keywords and strings at the registry level (since Google’s proprietary keyword intelligence is light years better than everyone elses), then allocate them on a petition basis to real world entities with marketing budgets but if that’s the case, add this to everything else associated with running a registrar, we’re getting deep into the “need to hire a lot more people” waters- for the sake of what? Spending a pile of cash on some value added free service of dubious actual value?
Sounds to me like someone desperately needs to start paying a dividend. This ain’t gmail.
Secondly, like we see with .tk, free domains are going to devolve into a magnet for scammers, shitheads, and kids. “Free” is the biggest drag on credibility, kinda like receiving an inquiry from jstevens@plumbingsupplies.com versus tommyboy13@hotmail.com. You think anyone (with a brain) is going to build their business on the less credible extension, just because its free and a keyword might be available? There’s plenty of cheap keywords available in .vc, too.
Who knows, maybe it has legs, but on the surface, it doesn’t seem to be anything that will amount to anything substantial.
the goal is to index your content. you give google your data. they profit. same old story. having a domain in their zone makes this really easy for google.
google will also be getting into the cloud hosting biz. google vs. amazon.
why don’t they just come clean and pronounce “googlenet”?
instead it’s incremental steps to pwn the whole public internet. just business i guess. but we can all see where this is heading.
it’s not that they’re adding new revenue streams. they’ve failed at that. > 95% still somes from the same source it did in 2003.
it’s that they are seeking total control of users. pwn the browser. pwn the phone. pwn the websites. pwn the content. pwn the search. pwn the domain names. and so awn.
peer-to-peer is indeed the answer to this problem. but not just p2p dns. dns is just a shorthand for numbers. p2p everything. mail, news, web, everything.
move away from client-server and you democratize the internet. you return to the original intent of the internet. known as “end-to-end”.
encrypt traffic and you make the whole thing secure. and we get our privacy back. (we can give keys to govt’s and law enforcement to keep them happy. but not to greedy private companies employing teams of sociopathic kids.)
we can do it. making it work is not the impediment. it already works. the challenge is “deployment”. users must be aware and demand it.
@ Brian Wick: “What is a the resale (secondary market) for something that is hung out in front of you for FREE.”
Sigh…you just don’t get it, clueless schmuck
Too old, too set in your ways to understand basic demand & supply
Facebook & Twitter aliases are FREE
I guarantee keywords such as “mortgage”, “loans”, celeb names etc all will sell for decent coin on the resale market (if allowed under the T & C)
In other words their resale value is a lot more than “FREE” – even though they were originally FREE
Do you not remember that sex.com & other top tier .coms were once “free”…!?
Accro –
My position on non.com’s has been stated many times – sure for every new gTLD there are probably 3,000-5,000 that may change hands a few times at decent premiums – including the ones you suggest – but what about speculators/suckers buying the next 500,000+ thinking they are some kind of “investment”.
The real money to be made is in these registries themselves – i.e. selling hand registered domains to end-users who just want a stand alone address on the net.
But a sucker is born every day – as apparantly you lend yourself in that category
@ Brian
You bring up some good points & food for thought
You shoud start a Wick-ipedia !
Can’t believe they didn’t apply for a .Hooters extention (yet) … I know you’re prolly the only one to get or appreciates that crack … Cheers !
Microsoft once had a Free .COM Domain Deal for Office Users
It was apparently orchestrated via an Australian Registrar – Status unknown
Microsoft also has PNRP built into newer systems – that is FREE by design
It appears to lack a Bit Throttle which would be needed to keep people from
filling the name-space via scripts, bots, etc.
The new (sort of free) Peer-2-Peer DNS has a natural Bit Throttle builtin
The Free global PNRP infrastructure has not been needed, but could become useful
Hello Michael,
We find it terribly amusing that some people believe the front of stage presentations or things that Google.com lets leak are their only operations. Googles think tank is based on new world Marketing concepts that most cannot comprehend.
Google.coms strategies are firmly based in the present field of creation, and are not based on past known patterns or already accepted principles. They have people that think on multiple planes that are not connected to todays accepted dogmas. They think beyond the speed of light. Like I said you have no idea of what is coming. This has been their trademark and we dont’t see that changing.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Question…
If Anyone Knows…
From a list compiled of all the extension out there
that have at least 500k items registered (per extension)
From that noisy list – Which are in the bottom 5.
As in – made it to that list – but barely hanging in (at that level)
~Patricia Kaehler – Ohio USA – DomainBELL
Why not actually go to the ICANN website and look at google’s applications?
http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/viewstatus
It seem google will use external registrars for registration and charge money for registration. See this diagram:
gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails:downloadattachment/82220?t:ac=499
Please do a bit of research before speculating….
If .web, .shop, .home were free what would stop anyone from registering 100,000’s of those domains and then one-click bulk changing all name servers to some parking program?
Free domains and free renewals would make anyone a rich man from parking, even if you would have lousy domains. It’s all about quantity then.
I would assume Google would limit free registrations maybe one domain per Gmail account or some other method
Well it would certainly be in line with their ethos.
I don’t know what their plans will be for them and there are no guarantees which TLDs they are going to secure. Although a company like Google you have to presume they are going to get a large number of their applications approved.
Michael has hit the nail on the head that if they were free, they’re bound to be restricted. It would have to be fairly strict too in my opinion.
I expect them to be public, and cheap, but probably not free.
“I expect them to be public, and cheap, but probably not free.”
….And never worth any more than that initial amount
oh the joy of building a business on a domain that Google could take away in a heart beat.
Back –
Oooch – not a good idea to be part of some lengthy class-action suit – in the mean time your business goes under- what maybe the domain is free but you have to host it on their servers for $100 a year.
better just buy an intuitive .com – and avoid all of it alltogether
If offered, who would really want a .NET or .BIZ for free, or at most, very cheap? (I mean, unless of course you already have the .COM, and just want the others to protect your brand.)
Having a .WEB or .SHOP wouldn’t be much different, and would basically tell visitors that your site (business) isn’t quite up there with the “big boys.”
I was offered .INFO sites for free a few years back, as well. I’m so mad at myself for not taking them up on that offer! 😉
Grim –
I agree with you on the life of .WEB and .SHOP (and all the rest) – but it won’t stop them from being reserved.
“I was offered .INFO sites for free a few years back”
Years ago eNom gave me the matching .INFO for all my .COM’s for free without asking or telling me – around 10,000.
When I found out I was pissed off and made them delete all of them.
If you want to blow $8 reserve a real garbage .com – wait 3-6 months or less – and then do a search on NetSol.com for all the extensions of that garbage domain – and a few will have been “taken”. Thats gets your attention as they want – Type in that domain and that registry would be happy to sell it to you 🙂