On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Ron Bennett wrote: > What I don't understand is why anyone would want to have > a domain name in an alternative gTLD that ICANN could just > usurp as their own and assign a registry to control - possibly > causing a root-split or more likely the people who bought into > the alternative gTLD losing their money and domains (that > they really never had to begin with many would argue). That's not going to happen. ICANN is in no position to expand the gTLD space. IBM has made it very clear that ICANN may provide a token gtld effort, but not much more then that. There are also legal consideration with respect to copyright and trademarks issues. I assure you nothing of significance is going to happen. > With ICANN in the drivers seat, attempts of starting alternative > gTLDs is a futile effort at best. The last real attempt was alternic > and that might have taken off except for poor marketing to the > masses (marketing to only ISPs was a bad approach since ISPs > don't change things unless their customers force them to); and > sadly when a top person (the founder?) of alternic hacked the > root servers and redirected internic.net. That was the end. The entire gTLD issues is bad marketing. I have yet to see any marketing efforts of any significance. Instead - what I have seen are alot of pipe dreams. Too many people assume they will make money in gTLD's and that is an economic impossibility if they don't get off their asses and sell sell sell. There are very few instances in which value is attributed to a name. Value results form hard work. > These days the only hope of new gTLDs come from ICANN. > While new gTLDs have been promised for several years, they're > on the way - and I'd bet money on it!! The registry/registrar > business has a limited future unless more domains can be > made available...67 character domains have no real purpose > but provide an additional opportunity for NSI and others to > make money and grow to keep stockholders, etc happy until > the new gTLDs are ready for prime time. And the day they > become available, it will be the 1849 Gold Rush all over again! No no .. no gold rush. Alot of gTLD and ccTLD operators have hoped for a gold rush, and not much of that sort of thing has happened. If you want to make money, you have to work hard to get your gTLD accepted. Alot of people in the domain wars have been in the misinformed position that if your create a tld space, everyone will follow. That's not going to happen. Too many tech types have spend too much time assuming that would be the case. But any seasoned business professional would of told you that sort of thinking is bunk. Regards Joe
