The new gtld discussion moves to Reddit “nTLD extensions are already failing”

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It looks like the new gtld discussion has moved to Reddit, in the sysadmin subreddit.

User netzvolk started things off:

For those of you that are not aware, the nTLD’s as opposed to the old good .com and others don’t have any limitations on price increases. This means you can register .networks today for $10 and the registry can decide to charge you $1000 next year.

Not only is this extremely risky for anyone that considers developing a new TLD but in some cases they are much worse than standard and traditional extensions because the registries decided to reserve all good names for their own use as premiums. And if you happen to own a premium one, they charge you more, so if .technology costs $30 a year for the public, if you have a premium one, it could be $500 a year just for you. How unfair is that?

The second you have to add 2 words to a new TLD it’s a far worse option than regular domains, examples:

yournewcompany.com (shorter and more credible)

yournewcompany.business

soundnow.com (shorter and more credible)

soundnow.audio

Forget single or dictionary words, because they are all premiums. No wonder they are failing…nobody is going to keep an ugly longer + untrusted extension. Don’t even try to use email on them, most system admins I know, block all of them in their spam filters. ccTLD (country code) seems a far better option for most people today.

So next time your bill comes for domains in your company. Think again. Some may fail in the future and soon.

There are 165 comments so far which is a lot for a topic dealing with domain names.

Now there are some comments that expressed a fondness for .solutions and one member said they got a .rocks for their band.

The disinformation started with lines like enjoy the $10,000 renewal fee. Some believing that if the band gets big they will increase the renewal on what is obviously not a premium name.

Could they do that ? Yes, will they ? I doubt it, that would be a bad pr hit that would in my opinion sink a new gtld. But who knows it is the wild west thanks to ICANN not implementing price caps.

Another member had a take that I am sure Rick Schwartz would approved of.

I’ve always been hesitant to use nTLDs for any public-facing services. Reason being no-one’s used to them yet – you hand someone a business card with a www.namecensored.noiwontfixyouripad as the URL, and half the time they’ll get confused and put a .com after it and wonder what kind of idiot IT guy hands out cards with an email/website that doesn’t work. It’s the same idea behind recommending to clients they don’t register where.do-the-dashesgo.com from 10 years ago – too confusing.

But I don’t mind using them for infrastructure. It’s difficult to get a memorable and short domain on .com that isn’t already taken (short because I’m likely to type it 1000 times a day). I’ll gladly spend (company money on) the $10/year to use public DNS and SSL (via LetsEncrypt), instead of having to argue with every decrepit piece of kit to trust a private CA and ignore the DHCP-issued DNS server.

You can check out the whole thread on Reddit

About Raymond Hackney

Raymond is a writer, domain trader and consultant based in Pennsylvania. Raymond is the founder of 3Character.com and TLDInvestors.com.

Comments

    • Enigma2 says

      Godaddy: “an extremely poor customer experience” about uniregistry.

      The string .guitars will not exist in the future. Thereby the domain has been through sunrise, Landrush, general Availability … and now entering Sunset!

  3. Jamie says

    I have 23 .gold gtld. I’m going to let them drop. I’ll be damn if I pay $100 bucks each to renew them. That’s what I get for not sticking to the script.

    • Kate says

      .crickets 😀

      At least you can have the singular, .cricket

      icann.cricket is actually registered to Icann 🙂

  5. Rich says

    ICANN can’t be to pleased with the abuse of the contractual agreements, and the loopholes that continue to be exploited.

    Losing godaddy no matter which way you spin it, is a huge lose to any extension, they are a marketing machine, and everyone needs them in their corner. I think Frank thought a few domainers might have a hissy fit, but he never thought this would spiral down as fast as it is.

    • Snoopy says

      I think Uniregistry would have expected to lose some registrars and GoDaddy wasn’t one they launched other either.

    • Reality says

      GoDaddy have been buying large legacy TLD portfolios for the last couple of years – Marchex, Elite Domains, Worldwide Media, DomainSource. They’re doubling down on high quality .COMs.

      GoDaddy know better than anyone that the new gTLDs are dead. They’ll take registrations when it makes economic sense to do so, which is why they’ve dropped Uniregistry to avoid the customer support calls. They have no interest in running dying extensions.

    • JR says

      Why would GoDaddy want to buy Uniregistry? GoDaddy would be wiser to continue what they are doing, buying domain portfolios like they did with Marchex. GoDaddy should stick to buying premium dot-Com portfolios, providing awesome customer service, and let the gTLDs whither away…

    • Mark Thorpe says

      Maybe Uniregistrar and Frank’s 400k .com portfolio, but not the registry (Uniregistry) itself. That could be sold to another company though.

  9. www.ʍʍʍ.com says

    New TLDs are great, I love to see that .com & co isn’t ‘alone’ anymore – here is a great ‘reverse example’:

    You can buy registry owned .top premium domains for premium prices while the renewal prices for them are standard prices!
    In other words: Buy premium, renew normal!
    That’s top!

      • www.ʍʍʍ.com says

        All ‘end user – / private – domaining’ (I mean domaining ‘not as registries / registrars’ but below them) is at least for 99 % an unpredictable business.
        Everyone has the opportunity to stay away from it.
        I have my reasons why I think that .top will turn into the most precious TLD.
        Why?
        I know, no one really wants to hear the sentence with ‘time’ – but exactly that’s it:
        It need’s time.

  11. STRIKER says

    The beginning stages of a true death-spiral for all gtlds…glad I only registered a few (and then let them drop)

  12. Michael Berkens says

    In my opinion Godaddy will not buy Uniregistry new gTLD strings. If you recall GD originally applied for 2 or 3 new gTLD’s and early on made the decision to withdraw their applications saying they didn’t want to compete with their “registry” customers.

    I don’t see them changing course.

    Of course the registrar and domain portfolio less the new gTLD’s are possible like any other registrar and domain portfolio

  13. Jason Franklin says

    Can’t put all the new gTLD’s in the same category with the ones owned by Uniregistry. The price increase was a Uniregistry decision not an all extensions across the board decision. ICANN needs to act now on regulating price caps. Registrars should be allowed some free reign on pricing but in reason. The free market will definitely weed Uniregistry’s extensions out with their current approach.

    • Abel says

      You say that we can’t put all the new gTLD’s in the same category with those owned by Uniregistry.

      However the cat is now out of the bag. Any of these new gTLD registries can if they wished increase their renewal prices uncapped, so they could increase renewal prices by even more than 3000% if they wanted to. Some say they do not intend to, or do not have any immediate plans to do so. But that is not enough.

      Instead of just words, to provide assurances there needs to be cast-iron, contractually binding legally worded guarantees agreed by ICANN.

      Words are not enough, because Frank Schilling said in his new gTLD applications that “Uniregistry intends to make a contractual commitment to registrants and their registrars not to increase registry prices above cost of inflation for the first five years after launch of the registry.”.

      Words, words, words.

      • Raymond Hackney says

        The cat was never in the bag every registry knew there were no price caps.

        ICANN should have never allowed.

    • Rich says

      What are you talking about, uniregistry opened up the book, on the loopholes that can be used in regards to being allowed to charge whatever they want.

      There are bad characters all over the world right now, they do not care who they harm, or the outcome of their actions. That is why there is legal contracts in place to protect people in such situations.

      ICANN granted these people these extensions based on what they indicated. Why do landlords have caps on rent increases, this is the way things work. If Uniregistry said they want $1M per registration they are allowed to do that.

      It affects everyone because it attacks the weakness of the gtld program, and the underlying concern of just how little protection buyers who buy to build out these domains have.

      Next time you get that inquiry, and you quote the person $10K, and they say I will go buy the GTLD for 99 cents, you can use this argument, with context to show them otherwise.

      Many GTLD operators are ticked off by Uniregistrys actions, they did not just hurt themselves, they hurt their whole category.