NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Oink! - AP: Internet braces for the "not-com" deluge (+ My Comments)
Oink! - AP: Internet braces for the "not-com" deluge (+ My Comments) http://bit.ly/lN4S1Q (This message in Google Buzz) - - - http://bit.ly/msbzTy (AP / Palm Beach Post) "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will meet Monday in Singapore (Sunday evening in the U.S.) to vote on its expansion plan for domain names. If ICANN approves the plan as expected, new domains could start appearing late next year." ... But businesses worry that they'll have to grab their brand names before others do. New suffixes could also create confusion as consumers navigate a Web with unfamiliar labels. It's also possible that the new names won't make much difference because many people these days rely on search engines and mobile applications to find what they are looking for online. Consumers don't type Web addresses into browsers nearly as much as they did 15 years ago when talk of a domain name expansion began. 'Most people don't pay a lot of attention to website addresses anyway these days," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, a website that covers the search industry.'" - - - A good summary overview of the current fiasco. Ultimately, billions of dollars (and various other currencies) will be spent by businesses desperately hoping that a new domain name brings fame and fortune. The vast majority will learn the hard way that they've been suckered. Another category of losers in this scheme: All the firms in a frenzied attempt to protect their trademarks and other identity properties from abuses in the new TLDs. The right for trademark owners to register first in these TLDs is essentially something like being offered the opportunity to go to the head of the line to be an extortion/rape victim. But there will be winners in all this: ICANN: In search of a continuing income stream, ICANN created a domain wet dream. Other elements of the "domain-industrial complex": Registries, registrars, and their various minions and partners Litigation teams (lawyers): They'll be raking it in from the endless series of related lawsuits and other disputes. -- And (oddly enough) another likely winner: Conventional dot-com TLD owners: Amidst the confusing clutter of new TLDs, a significant probability exists that the value of existing dot-com TLDs will rise, as the already established comfort level and familiarity with dot-com TLDs will stand apart away from the confusion, and (as an added bonus) dot-com TLDs will be less likely to suffer broad blocking (unlike any new TLD that one government or another finds objectionable). Particularly telling will be the number of businesses willing to exist *only* with one of the new domains, and without a dot-com presence as well. How many ".co" addresses have you seen lately, despite the attempt to position ".co" as an equal partner to ".com" ... ? Not all that far off in the future, I suspect, the time will come when it will be common for browsers to not even *display* domain names by default, and instead provide other authenticated identity labels (whether based on IDONS or something else entirely): http://bit.ly/hLVOUv [GCTIP]. And as many observers have noted, search engines -- not domain names -- have become the primary discovery and navigation tool for finding sites. ICANN's TLD expansion isn't just a "pig in a poke" -- it's an entire planet of putrid pork. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com