According to NetNames‘ Internet 2020 report, 92% of large companies in the US, Britain, France and Germany are planning to invest in new domain names (new gTLD’s) over the next three years, and 46% say they already have begun to invest in this area.
The telegraph.co.uk, wrote about the NetNanes’ report and chatted with CEO Gary McIlraith:
“Although .com will remain popular, registrations of new domain names will significantly overtake new registrations of .com and .net, as these established domains become saturated.
“Driven by the increase in internet adoption in emerging markets, a significant proportion of these new registrations will be made up of non-Latin characters, such as Cyrillic, Arabic and Chinese. Without the restrictions of keyboard entry, a .com extension could actually become a hindrance to attracting local traffic to a website.”
“The introduction of thousands of new domain name endings, ranging from .football to .shop and even .dog is set to dramatically change the way we search and navigate the web,” said of global domain name specialists NetNames.
“For a start, the descriptive nature of new domain name suffixes will help internet users to memorise web addresses more easily. As a result, our research shows that the vast majority of users will be more likely to enter a domain name in one of the new web suffixes into their browser bar, making them less reliant on search engines to find a website.”
McIlraith added that over one million domain names with new web suffixes have already been registered, and before long new registrations in the new suffixes will overtake those in .com.
“We are starting to see the emergence of communities of interest on the web with domain names that are much more relevant to those interests and the content of the websites they support”
“.Com and .Net domain names currently make up 42% of all web addresses according to Netnames and have been the main driver for the exponential growth of the internet in the last 20 years, but domain name specialists are predicting that .com could lose dominance by 2020, as hundreds of new web address endings come online.
As a result, .com, .net and country code top-level domains like .co.uk may well go out of fashion in favour of more descriptive, search-friendly and geographically-neutral web addresses.”
The Koolaid must be tasty.
Anyway the current registration figures are not encouraging. The growth in new extensions is very modest compared to established extensions.
This should be treated as a press release rather than an ‘expert prediction’, since the registrars are in the business of selling domain names.
I see no nTLD extension as a good fit for large corporations. Should I expect citi.bike or ibm.guru being a main domain name in future? 🙂 Sure not. Universal .com is the only choice. If .web will come, it may be an alternative, but why to leave .com for something new with no extra value? Am I blind?
Even if they launch 2000 extensions with 10,000 paid renewals on avg per year, they will come up short still. Taking away all the bs stats, and year 1 stupid, and free registrations, the avg overall numbers are quite weak. No
real growth. People keep comparing a specific gtld to success, it doesn’t work like that. It is a concept that either the thought process of all take off, or people keep typing in .com.
“…..are planning to invest in new domain names (new gTLD’s) over the next three years, and 46% say they already have begun to invest in this area.”
Planning? You mean they are sitting around waiting to register a new gtld? What’s considered a “large company”? How many (U.S.) 500 companies were surveyed? Why 92%? Which of the 500 companies that make up this 46% have already bought a new gtld? Over a million new G’s have already been registered? And so on…
Nice try. I guess if you throw enough hooks in the ocean, you will catch a few suckers along the way.
It’s possible, but I would say .com will still be more than popular; it will dominate. How many current .com registrations are there? About 113,000,000, if the data I read is correct. Then, all the other TLDs combined, every single one of them currently available, account for about 47% of all the current domain registrations. This figure includes all the new gTLDs, many of which have been “bestowed” upon their owners. Given that many of the new registries have only a handful of registrations – I quantify a handful as being less than 10,000 registrations – it seems highly unlikely these registries will even survive. Then there are those with only 10,000 to 25,000 active registrations. Some of these gTLDs include long-time registries like .travel, that wild success story of the early 2000’s.
Essentially, it’s quite possible that there will be more registrations of other gTLDs versus the .com by 2020, maybe sooner. However, we must then question which of the TLDs will be the most widely used? It sure won’t be .aero or .rentals or .coop or .xyz, the latter of which is not even listed on registrarstats.com, where I’m getting my information. The do list .berlin, though, the other of the new registries that is in the business of giving away their domains.
So, the story doesn’t tell the story. It doesn’t reveal how adoption will change and how many of these new registries will simply fall by the wayside. Some will survive only as defensive registrations prop up the registration numbers. Others will just fail.
The .com will remain the dominant TLD registered. If UDRP panelists can get their heads wrapped around the idea that just having a trademark does not entitle one to a domain name, and many of them are, more companies will come to the realization that getting the premium .com on the aftermarket, from those who invested early, will be the wiser course.
Of course, I may just be the clown at the rodeo begging for the bull’s horns. Only time will tell.
Ludicrous. Absurd beyond rebuttal.
There are close to 113,500,000 .com’s and 15.2 Million .nets
and I’m not in London and not even going to the Verisign party tonight
New gTLDs have taken over Domaining.com feeds now for 7 or 8 months, with the help of some here, I may add.
But guess what, Berkens is still not using THE.DOMAINS
He is still TheDomains.com. I know he will give some excuses why he is not. But the bottom line is the bottom line.
No blogger is using dot domains. None.
So ‘take over’ should not invoke any visceral fear for change.
[In fact Berkens, instead of tugging your reader’s visceral nervous system, make them use their cabeza with real news].
Domen
As usually you missed a few key facts
1. i did not write the story
2. The story is not a PR but a story
3. the story was published by telegraph.co.uk which is a very large daily newspaper in the UK with a circulation of over 500K.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph
If you don’t like the story, think its crap or anything else please leave comments over there
@Berkens,
You successfully indicated what you did not do by pointing to the fact that you did not write the article and so on, BUT you failed to point to what you did do: you editorialized the article. That rightfully opens you up for criticism.
Yes, I could leave my comment over there, but I can also leave my comment over here. One does not preclude the other. In fact, there’s a third possibility: I could leave my comments in both places.
You see, we both have different jobs to do; you are a consultant to one or more of these Registries, and hope to garner more, which potential makes you a full time consultant to all. And I am a critic.
You have a dilemma; the moment you are a good legacy domain name advocate, you automatically become a bad consultant to these Registries; and vice versa. You can’t wear both hats. So stop protesting. Everything you write is considered a PR until proven otherwise. Sometimes just mentioning “new gTLD” brings a spotlight to it, and that’s probably all you want from it.
.com and .net are full of crap.
we can have unlimited crap gTLDs.
so in theory this could happen. in practice only on a delusional mind will this be probable.
Domen
Well I just went over to the telegraph and you don’t seem to be one of the 3 commentators over there so if that is your job you might have to be fired
Also how much are you making doing your job?
LOL 😀
@Michael Berkens,
I just replied there.
One can never escape: “paid endorsements” no matter how are they paid…
Domain names industry is as bad as the rest.
This is how the new gtlds will succeed, by PR.
Dotcom will drown in a sea of better options.
@ And
When this fantasy becomes reality the .COM traffic will blow SEO efforts off the map. Be careful what you wish for, but we support GTLD expansion.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)