Lexi Pandell of Wired wrote a very interesting headline for a story on Google using ABC.xyz, “Thanks to Google’s Alphabet, .Xyz Will End .Com Dominance” Lexi mentioned that she interviewed Daniel Negari earlier in the year and he gave his vision on .XYZ.
“We end the alphabet in ‘xyz’ and we should end domain names the same way.”
It turns out someone agrees with him. Yesterday, Google’s new holding company, Alphabet, revealed that it is making its online home at abc.xyz—a move that could signal an end to .com dominance for good.
That is probably a long shot bet, there have been companies using alt extensions for projects for years, the results of those projects have not ousted .com as the leader in domain extensions. To be clear this is certainly a win for Daniel and .XYZ. Mike Berkens told me when .XYZ was first launching that “Daniel is going to make money, I don’t know how everything will play out, but he will make money.”
The ultimate win would have been Google.xyz, and we know they are not doing that. The stars aligned properly for Dot XYZ, a company that likes to take chances picked Alphabet as a name, they could have the beginning with ABC and the end .XYZ for their domain name. We also have to remember that the public should not be using the address often, sure for research maybe, buy Ma and Pa Kettle will still be going to Google.com/cctld, YouTube.com and Gmail.com.
The other thing to remember is Google changes their mind a lot, they close projects and start new ones everyday. They could move to Alphabet.Google, who knows. The fact of the matter is this what domaining is, you get blurbs that move the fortunes of extensions up and down. Domain investors need liquidity, if this announcement brings about any kind of active secondary market for .xyz then more people than Daniel will make money. If not then down the road this will just have been another chapter in the GTLDwars.
From the article:
But the surprise news about Alphabet may dispel concerns about search rankings and shift the thinking about gTLDs, says Negari, who has control of eight gTLDs, including .college, .rent, and .security. “Obviously, Google believes in it if they’re rebranding on .xyz,” he told me after the news of Alphabet and its new URL broke. “This is the ultimate validation.”
The news hasn’t been bad for business, either: .XYZ normally gets 3,000 new registrants per day. Today, Negari said last night that they were on track to get 10,000.
When I mentioned Negari’s quote to him—the one about the alphabet ending in “xyz”—he laughed. “I guess now Google ends Alphabet with xyz, too.”
Read the full story here
There were a couple comments of note on Wired, Joseph Peterson who writes at DomainNameWire.com and comments here on several other blogs said this:
Ludicrous headline. Simply ludicrous. And inexcusable as journalism.
Will Wired.com rebrand overnight as Wired.xyz along with millions of other established websites with .com brands? Amazon.xyz? Ebay.xyz? Facebook.xyz?
Every bit as plausible as as this alternate headlines:
“Thanks to Google’s Alphabet, Daniel Negari has been identified as the risen Jesus Christ and will now administer all the world’s operations.”
World leaders, step down!
Another commenter did not understand how the immoral practice of domain investing was allowed, you can read all five comments at the end of the Wired article.
Yes, XYZ or dot whatever will take over the world.
Please dump all your dot com NOW!!!
I think I might register abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.alphabet
Hi Raymond,
While there are probably only a handful .xyz domains which make sense, this is definitely one of them; Beautiful in structure, meaning, sound and telling the brand story. Funny enough it fits with my tip 21 in this post about finding the right domain, which I published a couple of hours before Google’s announcement: http://blog.europeandomaincentre.com/the-right-domain-name/
I agree that the domain ABC.xyz itself is appealing in its own right. Yet it is something of a novelty or oddity. This particular specimen has virtues – visual symmetry, alphabet associations, and the implication of “from start to finish” – that other domains in .XYZ cannot replicate.
There have been and will be other good nTLD domains. Many better than ABC.xyz. Crucially, those will mostly be good for reasons they DON’T share with this .XYZ unicorn. ABC.xyz may garner headlines and shine a spotlight on the nTLD program, but it really doesn’t lead the way. In and of itself, it’s a dead end.
I question whether this was the right domain for Google’s holding company. Mixed feelings on that score, which I might write about at some length later.
The claims made by Daniel Negari and the XYZ registry are (as always) grossly absurd. I realize the fellow lives to sell himself, but somebody ought to have taught a 6-year-old Daniel Negari a healthier admiration for truth.
And someone has pointed abc.wtf to bing
Bing? Is that still around?
Google Wave, Orkut, Google Plus etc…
.xyz nearly has a third as many registrations as .biz, and we all know what a game-changer .biz was.
Daniel Negari has got, and still gets, a lot of grief. The story of the people selling the shovels making the money has always resonated as being the truth, for me, when it comes to these new extensions. That said, the best shovel sellers were saying there’s gold in them there hills, regardless of if there was or wasn’t. Mr Negari has definitely proven himself to be a better shovel seller than most.
.XYZ has gone from Hooli, which I thought was a coup in itself, to Google in two months. Do I think .XYZ will take over the world? No. Are they worth investing in for resale? Not on a scale that will sustain anyone. Do I think Mr Negari will make a success, i.e. for his own pocket, of .XYZ through chutzpah? Yes.
“Thanks to Google’s Alphabet, .Xyz Will End .Com Dominance”
and that is exactly what those who register the dot XYZ will tell the DOT COM owner asking to buy it.
complete sucker fools
@Anthony
.”XYZ has gone from Hooli, which I thought was a coup in itself, to Google in two months. Do I think .XYZ will take over the world? No. Are they worth investing in for resale? Not on a scale that will sustain anyone. Do I think Mr Negari will make a success, i.e. for his own pocket, of .XYZ through chutzpah? Yes.”
Exacto! & I commend what Negari has done through promotion, wrangling a big-time chutzpah. If he gets a primo product (app, product offering) or some premium .com(s), this guy will rule. Marketing really is an art.
Honestly, I love this domain name (abc.xyz) and I think it’s going to open the eyes of many of us in the domain business to the fact that some of these new gTLDs are worth investing in.