Steve Lohr of the New York Times published a piece on the .AI extension.
.Ai has become a windfall for Anguilla. It was once just a side job for the man running the extension, Vincent Cate, a computer scientist who settled in Anguilla and later became a citizen.
Those fees added up to $2.9 million in 2018, the most recent official government tally, or nearly as much as the combined salaries of the 127 primary-school teachers, assistants and administrators in the territory. The revenue rose sharply again last year.
One part of the article was not about .ai but the diminshed role of domain names as the way people get around on the net.
To some degree, search engines like Google, social networks like Facebook and mobile apps like Uber have diminished the role of domain names as the way people navigate online. Gone, for the most part, are the days when getting around online meant painstakingly typing a web address into a browser.
The article goes on to look at some of the startups using the .ai extension. It also delves into new gtlds, Spell.run is one example cited, the founder thought about a .com but opted for the .run instead. The founder wrote, “The name is not just a brand, but descriptive of what we provide,” Mr. Piantino said.
Read the full article here
even average keyword .ai domains fetched decent sales at the .ai auction yesterday…decent for a non .com
vince, who had a successful career in silicon valley back in the day, is doing a super job running the .ai registry in anguilla (my fave island in the carib, along with guadeloupe)…fave for fishing is bimini….
It is doing well right now for the registry.
As far as domainers goes this will all get washed away because of extremely high renewal fees and an extension that represents a current tech trend. Give it 5 years and domainers will have massive losses on these names.
snoopy, ai is not a tech trend, but the question will be will companies be compelled to accentuate being an .ai company with an .ai extension.
9 well-funded companies purchased .ai domains from me. 5 figures each
but i also made the mistake of selling premium key word names (15) in .ai to a chinese millionaire/domain investor for high 5 figures total (classic risk averse move)
but i still own 18 high premium key words in .ai —
now buying mainly betting and healthcare domains in .com, the king of extensions
If AI is not a tech trend then what would you consider a tech trend? Companies are using this as a buzzword to help raise funds. It is the 3D or B2B of the current era.
snoopy, you’re so misguided, as has been pointed out to you by many visitors to the domain blogs…i’ll refrain from future responses to you as you’re a time-waster
there are trends in AI but AI is not a trend…how can you possibly use trends like b2b and 3d to compare to a technology that is approaching critical mass equivalent with the adoption of the Internet
I realize you’re a domainer from the 1990s, and “stuck in your ways”. I’ve worked for 2 big AI companies, Element.ai and DeepMind and sit on the Board of a large AI fund…we’ve never heard anyone say AI is a trend…BTW….there has never been a 3D or B2B fund…digital health, app, ai, yes