7 replies to this topic

[Orpheus Descending]

Has anyone read about this and is it the armagedon everyone in the UK thinks it will be? Word on the street here is that certain domain names are going to go for €600,000 (yes, that is not a mistake). There is such terror over cyber squaters that some companies are prepared to pay this. Is it me, or is this just a bit of cyber insanity to entertain me because the summer months are so slow and boring? (and now wet)

You can read the ICANN Press Release here. There is other stuff on the web in the UK, but you can do your own search to find those articles.

Won't sites that already have strong SEO strategies just get stronger before the 2009 free-for-all? Is this a good wake up call for companies that sit on the fence with SEO and let PPC do all the work? Is a cyber squater really going to pay top doller for a domain like coke.speghettimonster and then optimise it appropriately to sell shasta cola? I guess I'm skeptical about all the hype.

And if the scenario they are spinning will be the case, isn't there something a little off about a non-profit organisation suddenly deciding to open the floodgates, so they can recoup a €10,000,000 investment? At what point does someone stand up and say, 'wait a second?' I hate to sound shrill, but if this will have the kind of impact dooms day sayers are spouting, shouldn't we be asking who the people are (the very few people) who made a decision that will effect the global online market? Do a few people in a boardroom really have this kind of power? And if I were to stage a cyber protest, how can I have a vertual sit in?

[Jill]

Is it me, or is this just a bit of cyber insanity to entertain me because the summer months are so slow and boring? (and now wet)

It's not just you.

I don't really see how it will have any affect on anything other than making more domains available. But then again, I haven't read much on the subject, so there may be some issues I'm overlooking or don't know about.

[Randy]

Whatever else it may or may not be, it's not something to worry about at this point. They don't even have a Plan of Implementation yet. Per their own announcement ICANN is not going to have the first application process until the 2nd half of next year. That's a million years away in Internet years.

As to all of the other stuff, it'll be interesting to see what they come up with for a plan. I can't see any brand name or trademark ending up as a .TLD, except in the rare circumstance that it's being purchased by the brand/trademark holder. ICANN can say whatever they want in trying to remove themselves from liability --and that's what they try to do in their Q&A in the document I linked to above-- but them saying it doesn't keep them from being sued. Do you really think GM wouldn't line up attorneys if they allowed Joe Blow to reserve a .GeneralMotors TLD? The purchasers wouldn't be the only one being sued.

Beyond this, which they have to have thought about, there are some fairly significant technical hurdles to overcome. DNS servers have their limits.

Ask again in two years and we'll have a better idea.

The real question I have is how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are they going to charge for this service? I can't imagine it would anything one could remotely call cheap.

[MaKa]

Finally a possibility for me to get the email address I always wanted m@ri.jn . On the other hand a novelty email address isn't really worth $##,### to me

[Nueromancer]

Has anyone read about this and is it the armagedon everyone in the UK thinks it will be? Word on the street here is that certain domain names are going to go for €600,000 (yes, that is not a mistake). There is such terror over cyber squaters that some companies are prepared to pay this. Is it me, or is this just a bit of cyber insanity to entertain me because the summer months are so slow and boring? (and now wet)

You can read the ICANN Press Release here. There is other stuff on the web in the UK, but you can do your own search to find those articles.

Won't sites that already have strong SEO strategies just get stronger before the 2009 free-for-all? Is this a good wake up call for companies that sit on the fence with SEO and let PPC do all the work? Is a cyber squater really going to pay top doller for a domain like coke.speghettimonster and then optimise it appropriately to sell shasta cola? I guess I'm skeptical about all the hype.

And if the scenario they are spinning will be the case, isn't there something a little off about a non-profit organisation suddenly deciding to open the floodgates, so they can recoup a €10,000,000 investment? At what point does someone stand up and say, 'wait a second?' I hate to sound shrill, but if this will have the kind of impact dooms day sayers are spouting, shouldn't we be asking who the people are (the very few people) who made a decision that will effect the global online market? Do a few people in a boardroom really have this kind of power? And if I were to stage a cyber protest, how can I have a vertual sit in?

its not a domain it a generic TLD - a whole difernt thing i would suspect that doing ome of thease new tlds you wont see much change out of $1,000,000 after the bidding operatonal and technical costs have been added to the cost of the TLD

[Nueromancer]

It's not just you.

I don't really see how it will have any affect on anything other than making more domains available. But then again, I haven't read much on the subject, so there may be some issues I'm overlooking or don't know about.

I am not sure what they did this for except as a money making exercise as Ivan Pope said to me the other day "Jon Postel went to his grave for this".

I could see some utility for major players like Google but becoming a TLD registry (not a registrar) is many orders of magnitude harder than just reselling domains - the shoddy web 2.0 approach to technology (eg twitter) will not do TLDs have to have 100% uptime non of this crappy 5 nines

When I was involved peripherally with .coop (i used to be one of the owners) we had redundant severs in 4 out of the five continents.

Quite why the local govenment in berlin are pushing for .berlin Chavanisiam or yet another example of German Companies/Organisations blowing a hole in the myth of German Technical Competence.

I bet if .berlin happens some one registers bunker.berlin as a domain so they can have hitler@bunker.berlin as an email address

[Diablos]

I think the media has massivly over hyped this too, it will simply not have that big an effect.
Search and Internet behavior wont change overnight just because Coke buy .cola, people will still type in cocacola.com because they are used to doing it. Maybe a few years down the line things will change but I doubt it.

I can see google taking a "meh" approach to this one as well and see .custom TLDs struggle in the SERPs.

As far as I am concerned this has no value to the search industry and very little value to e-commerce.

[rolf]

Like all sizeable changes to the way the net works, some entrepreneurs in the right place with the right idea might make a quick buck out of this, but other than that I can't see how this is going to affect anyone majorly - am I missing something?