The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has voted to approve an absolutely massive increase to the number of generic top level domains (GTLDs) and as far as I can tell no one is happy about this, this is the most damning analysis of this news I’ve seen yet.
The consequence of this vote is that many, many words can now be used instead of .com and .net. As I understand it anyone can apply for a GTLD just so long as there is enough money on offer. At first glance there could be some real benefits for this such as the GTD of .london, in theory any company owning a domain using .london would be in London making it easier to tourists. There could also be some generic uses of the GTLD such as museums.london providing lots of information about museums in London.
For tech companies there could also be some useful domains to come from this like join.lync or download.skype, in fact the options for corporations are quite endless. And that is the problem. I shall use Microsoft as an example of this problem but this is applicable to most companies.
Microsoft are likely to want to own the .microsoft GTLD and that’s fine. Navigating to windows.microsoft, xbox.microsoft or phone.microsoft all makes sense. However, Microsoft will probably also want the GTLD of all its products too so that cyber-squatters don’t own .windows. This could lead to names such as 7.windows, phone.windows or azure.windows. Again all fine names. But again Microsoft wont want someone else to own .windows7 or .windowsphone. Still, these domains are quite logical, in fact marketplace.windowsphone makes a lot of sense.
The problem with all these names is that it becomes very, very confusing for the consumer. Does the consumer go to microsoft.com/windows7, 7.windows, windows7.microsoft or windows.microsoft/7, I imagine that what ever they go to would all redirect to somewhere else but its still confusing.
For Microsoft, and indeed most companies, they will have to spend an absolute fortune to get all the GTLDs with their trademarks’ namesake. Registering all these GTLDs wont mean that Microsoft will benefit or earn more but then I don’t think the company can afford not to register the GTLDs for fear of someone else abusing the name.
Of course there will be some excellent uses of GTLDs to make very short, useful domain names but it seems to me that on the whole this will be expensive for businesses and confusing for consumers. The one good thing for Microsoft, I suppose, is that to save money they need to continue their product consolidation; I imagine .live could be quite a valuable GTLD for Microsoft.
What are your thoughts of this news from ICANN? Can you see any good uses of this new rule?
