New tlds arriving '09?

[inertia]

I bet some of you have known about this for ages but I haven't seen any discussions on it so far:

Major internet shake-up heralds new web addresses | Technology | guardian.co.uk

What does everyone think about the ramifications of such a shake-up? Good or bad?

I think the world has taken .com into its heart and it is now so standardised (in the same way .co.uk is in the UK) that it is part of our daily vocabulary ("why dont you go and log on to shut the hell up .com!?"). Will a load of new TLDs just mean more for joe public to remember? Would it make no sense to create new ones when we have enough already?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

What does everyone think about the ramifications of such a shake-up? Good or bad?

To be honest I read this a few days ago and I felt sick. I can only see more parked domains, and incompetent for business scammers trying to hurt established companies using their existing domain names with suffixes such as .bank, .sport, .bet, etc.

This is not utopia or paranoia. It is an evidence based fact! To be specific:

I have been trapped in an over-heated debate with a member here at WPW (no names), and I got a threat PM telling me within others:

"Check out the new site I just bought, oh wait it is the same name as your site but .info, wonder how that happened."

Thats all what I can tell bro.

[inertia]

Basically, to protect ourselves from attack we are all going to have to register truck loads of domain names.

Domain name salesman are still using this tactic today. They scare the c*ap out of naive business owners and make them buy every possible variation on their company domain.

(hope your "cyber beef" resolves itself soon WNTS!)

[Webnauts]

Don't be afraid man. Those tactics are garbage if you do a good work and your site is once established. The ones who will suffer are unexperienced site owners and new web comers.

[inertia]

The ones who will suffer are unexperienced site owners and new web comers.

Theyre the ones who always suffer and as long as people like that exist certain companies will carry on making loads of money! I know companies who have a "if theyre stupid enough to pay then were clever enough to ask" philosophy.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

I know companies who have a "if theyre stupid enough to pay then were clever enough to ask" philosophy.

Do you want stupid customers? They can be a serious pain in the ass.

[inertia]

No! I hate stupid customers! The current company im working for deal with larger companies who are serious about their web marketing but i have worked for other companies who target the stupid customers.

The only thing worse than a stupid customer is a stupid salesman whose sold something that you really cant provide!

[incrediblehelp]

It is going to be a complete mess.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

It is going to be a complete mess.

You can bet on that bro.

[bj]

Yeah, pretty much a complete spammer haven. Now all the sysadmins will have to block every new tld like they now block .info and .mobi and the others that everyone thought was a "gold rush".

[chrisJumbo]

I just don't understand their rationale. With the TLDs already out there, it has been a pain, this will just make it much, much worse. I'm sure the domain sellers/sitters are thrilled, though.

[advancedmerchant]

With a $100K registration fee, and the REQUIREMENT TO MANAGE it, I don't expect many problems. Major corporations can have .pepsi, .HP, .Dell, etc.

It's real simple, if they require the TLD's to have 4 or more characters, we can filter them ALL out, and have "INCLUSION LISTS", instead of filters and exclusion lists that grow beyond managable size. You could tell your system to reject any 4 or more character TLD except (maybe) .info, .mobi, and .microsoft.

Someone will almost certainly 'sponsor' .sex, .xxx, .adult, etc, they will be easy to filter (I think), as they will make the news as someone forks over the $$$ to sponsor the TLD.

Remember, this is not a free-for-all, this is an expensive club. Once, as an example, Microsoft sponsors .Microsoft, they just will not allow anyone except themselves, and maybe certified partners to use the TLD.

This could be something positive, eBayer's could register their site under .ebay to go straight to their eBay store using their existing URL prefix. You could access your Amazon.com account under yourname.amazon,

[alexsimon]

I am mainly a domainer, and I am not thrilled. .com will remain .com even if .shit arrives. And this will be a big pain for big TM holders who will have to register their domains because of the cybersquatters.

Anyway, on short term nothing may happen. On long term yes, as I think ebay will buy .ebay, so that they can fight easier all those phishing sites. They supported this new move.

Other than that it is just money for ICANN & co.

[bj]

Other than that it is just money for ICANN & co.

Yeah, ICANN & Co, and all the domain registrars, and all the frontrunners, and all the squatters, and all the spammers and all the other greedy basta*ds.

[Big Juice]

This is a bad idea that will devalue the Internet as we know it. Another thing to think about is how the search engines will address the new TLDs? Will we be looking at domain age becoming an even bigger factor for rankings?

As a person who works on the dark side of the Internet you know I am going after .666 and would love to be able to control that TLD.

As someone who works in gambling I would have to say it would very easy for some gambling company that is flush with money to corner the market by securing .bet .gamble. .wager .poker .casino - can you say monopoly?

I worked in porn too and there is another industry flush with cash - how would you like to control .boob .tits .ass .kiss .babes .cum .et el? I know I would love to control all of the .boobs on the Internet!

ICANN you say cash grab?

[advancedmerchant]

[quote=Big Juice;383875]This is a bad idea that will devalue the Internet as we know it. Another thing to think about is how the search engines will address the new TLDs? Will we be looking at domain age becoming an even bigger factor for rankings? /QUOTE]

WOW! Domain age = Rankings?? I would be ALL FOR THAT! If they gave precedence to the oldest holder of content, then content theft would be a thing of the past....

[deepsand]

This is a train wreck, of monumental proportions, waiting to happen

I can't wait to see how many go after DNs such as "abcdef.ebay."

The sh!ts gonna hit the fan.

[DaveSawers]

Why so negative? What's the big deal with TLDs anyway. I bet 90% or more of internet users don't know (and don't care) what .com is supposed to mean. So someone registers microsoft.stinks Who cares. It will soon become obvious that the official microsoft site is called microsoft (with no dots at all). Let's get rid of all TLD's, and all dots in domain names and let's allow the use of spaces so you can actually read what the domain name is supposed to be. This proposal is a start but it could have gone a lot further in my view.

Sure the new system will need some regulation and there's bound to be a few law suits but in the end, I think it'll be much better for internet users.

[datetopia]

this.looks-like-chaos ... what's next? domains with unicode letters? or at least punctuation.... in 10 years we could register "Hello! This is my domain name... Please click! ... Sir!".

[Peter (IMC)]

Why so afraid? Why so emotional?

Just the other day I was almost the victim of one of those lousy fraude emails that create a adwords.google.com.something.cn domain and made an almost perfect copy of the Google Adwords interface. They sent an email that looked just like a usual adwords email saying that they couldn't process the last payment. I already had my credit card in my hand when I realized that just a couple of hours before I had seen one of our ads in a Google SERP. Then I noticed the damn URL was wrong.

The spammers and other criminals don't need all those new TLD's to do their lousy thing. Is it going to get worse? Is that even possible? It's already very very bad. It can't get any worse than it already is.

These aditional TLD's won't change a thing.

What's needed is a way to catch spammers and make them be acountable for what they´re doing. I realize that's almost an impossible thing to do, though there are things that help.

Paypal for example makes a huge point out of being careful in every email they send. Don't click on links in emails. Google could do something like that too.

Buying all those aditional TLD's to "protect" your website is just fake security if you ask me. Just to fool your self.

Maybe they should change something and make it possible to simply register the word before the last dot. (in some countries before the last 2 dots like thisword.co.uk) and automatically you reserved all the other combination in case you use an officially registered name. That would take care of a lot of these problems.

[Peter (IMC)]

[quote=advancedmerchant;383877]

Originally Posted by Big Juice