Comments on: .yournamehere: Changing the Face of the Internet

By: Charles Corby

Charles Corby — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:33:54 +0000

Adele, thanks, from a Little Guy, who (most likely will NEVER be able to secure his last name,) for ‘getting this OUT THERE.’ Some of us, like me, like to dream, and I think it’s better to have REALITY bite ya’ on the nose early-on in the daydreaming process. I agree wholeheartedly with CT Moore, the the squatters (assuming that they have adequately deep pockets) will stand to make the most. If ICANN does nothing to protect trademarks/tradenames it MIGHT take a bit out of the squatter’s ‘bottom line.’For the rest of us, it will, most likely, be a ‘wait-n-see’ game.

By: Adele McAlear

Adele McAlear — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:02:32 +0000

Thanks everyone for your comments!

Benjamin – Re: Trademarks – my thinking is that it will be more costly to brands to defend trademarks in virtually any language TLD. That’s a lot of bases to cover and wonder at what point will it simply be not viable to protect your brand globally. ICANN has not made it clear if a ruling in one language will extend across all languages.

Mykl – It will certainly make URLs more diverse and confusing to people when there are more options to remember. I wonder if Google’s suggest feature will default to the browser’s origin and automatically fill in the site name with the local language TLD.

Michael – Sure, .gruen will be low in a year or two IF you’re given the opportunity to have it. If there’s a multinational company named Gruen, you’ll likely never have access to that TLD. Good thing my last name isn’t ebay! (Mind you, I’m not about to spend six figures to secure my own name either.)

By: Michael E. Gruen

Michael E. Gruen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:13:28 +0000

What’s going to be really interesting is how quickly the rest of the world (you know, the not-so-computer literate) will adopt the change.

Also, on price, anyone else remember when .coms cost $75/year? I imagine in a year or two, the cost of getting, say, .gruen, will be quite low.

By: CT Moore

CT Moore — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:16:50 +0000

I see squatters making a lot more money…

By: Kim Dushinski

Kim Dushinski — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:02:54 +0000

Wow. I heard something on the news the other day about “anything being a domain name” but I didn’t know what they meant. Now I get it.

This will prove interesting that is for sure.

By: Mykl Roventine

Mykl Roventine — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:38:08 +0000

Wow, how did I miss this? I think it will be very difficult to educate users about entirely new TLDs, especially if there are an unlimited number of them. What type of URLs can we expect from this – promotions.coke? Although, to look at it another way: this could all just speed along the demise of the type-in altogether. With tinyurls and the like, coupled with search results, the average user probably isn’t that far from never typing in a URL again.

Thanks for a juicy post with lots to think about!

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:27:02 +0000

All in all I think it will be a good thing. It should ease some of the domain squatting issues and open up some innovation in the TLD space, which has been log-jammed for as long as I can remember.

I agree with you on the brand issue, or rather with regard to trademarks. However, I don’t think the rules have changed there and they seem reasonably workable for most.

My only worry is, does this hand more power to Google? Increasingly people search on a company name, rather than doing companyname.com – if there are a range of TLDs, will this put more power into the hands of a few search engines?