Liberalisation of the Internet - Special Report
In 2010, the geography of the Internet is set to expand significantly, as ICANN will liberalise the market for domain name extensions. Gandi have commissioned a report from The FutureLab to see how consumers and businesses view this change.
More about the liberalisation process
Is this a squatting opportunity or a branding opportunity?
2/3 of businesses don't realise domain extensions are being liberalised next year. But those businesses that do know about this (like Deloitte) are excited about the opportunities in the areas of global branding. However corporates are also concerned that brand protection mechanisms need to be in place at the new registries, a view that has been raised by Microsoft.
More about the impact on businesses. Inc. video interview with COO Gandi.net
Will the net become full of pointless domains?
Many consumers are confused about what liberalisation means and are concerned by the rise of squatting, phishing and advertising clogging up the domain space. However they do feel a real connection with localised domain names, e.g. .london, .paris. nyc, etc., and communities they are interested in, e.g. .music, .movie, .sport. There is also a growing Generation Y group interested in self publishing and being associated with certain brand names like .facebook, .myspace, .moonfruit.
More about the impact on consumers. Inc. video interview with Marketing Director Gandi.net
Will this mean the end of 'Dot Com'?
Will 'Dot Com' decline with the advent of new geographical, brand and interest group based extensions. Or will this give Dot Com a chance to clean up its act and reclaim its prime real estate from pay per click ads, squatters and unresolved web addresses.
More about the evolving landscape
The evolving landscape of the internet following liberalisation
Why did Gandi commission this independent report
At Gandi we feel strongly about the future of the internet. We commissioned this report because we want to keep the domain space free for consumer and commercial use. We think this is an important enough issue that people need to understand the impact on them as consumers and businesses. How do you want these new domain territories to be governed? and are there lessons to be learned from how we've used our existing domain space?
More about the report
Download the report in full
Published on Monday 8 June 2009 by Joe
Comments
So it basically means that successful applicants (cost hundreds of thousands of dollars) will be allowed to manage/sell their own namespace.
Leaving the "political" implications aside, what will this do for URI structures? Will a lawyer buy mycompany.lawyer as well as .mycompany to put out mycompany.lawyer/services along with lawyer.mycompany/services or services.mycompany/lawyer to supplement mycompany.com/services?
Hi mc,
Yes all those combinations are possible. It will mean you could have company.lawyer or just .company. In practice unless you're a very big company you may not want to go after .yourcompany, though global brands may well do this, e.g. Deloitte have already expressed an interest. But Deloitte probably won't be selling domains on the .deloitte extension, it is more likely to be used internally.
But the scope for a whole new landscape is indeed enormous!
Joe
We're looking at turning the Internet into one of those towns that has Maple Street, Maple Avenue, Maple Drive, Maple Lane, Maple Road, Maple Court, and Maple Way, and visitors can't find the Maple they're looking for. And those who'll benefit are those who'll make money by selling TLDs (and second-level domain names under TLDs they buy).
I've been on about this for some time; see these two blog posts, for example, from two years ago and one year ago, respectively:
http://staringatemptypages.blogspot...
http://staringatemptypages.blogspot...
And I had a conversation with Peter Dengate-Thrush about it at the last IETF meeting in San Francisco. He wants the market to decide.
The problem is that it'll be an artificial market, where businesses will feel they have to buy their names to protect themselves. Meanwhile, consumers will just rely on Google even more than they do now, and the domain names will, ironically, matter less than ever.
Let Ghandi know that codesucker appreciates the post. He can't wait for his .nyc domain - thanks for explaining
All these new domains are going to start fresh in terms of backlinks and authority, search engines give lots of weight to a domains age - dotcoms are here to stay regardless imo
I agree with Barry on this and think that it will all fly right over the head of 90% of the "average" internet users who don't know what anything but a .com is and therefore be a giant waste of money for the small and medium sized business owners.
At the same time, the internet is getting a little crowded, it's harder to get a great domain name for sure. I think adding these domains will help clear up some of the clutter, but will also be a false hope to most. I'm in South Carolina and could have bought NameofMyTown.SC but didn't see the value in this. I think the same realization will be reached with .NYC and .lawyer