On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Ron Bennett wrote:
> What does IBM have to do with this...you lost me...anyways the
> proposed gTLDs are all generic in nature; specific company gTLDs
> was rejected long ago and even many companies that once sought
> them are now against them as well since they'd be bad for business.
IBM runs - finances - and lobbies extensively for ICANN. Check out the
Cook report - he has something in there on it. I've been playing the old
follow the money game and I'm finding that their are alot of politicos
getting graft to keep the show alive.
> Here I agree, but I think market forces (ie. demand) is becoming
> so strong that new gTLDs will be added eventually despite companies
> trying to protect their interests...and many of the large companies
> know new gTLDs are inevitable and are becoming registrars - allows
> them to make a few extra bucks and gives them a cheap and easy
> way to register their products/trademarks in all gTLDs.
I think you've just made an understatement. Your are absolutly correct,
the demand existed yesturday and it's getting desparate today. When I was
with the Adult SuperStore, and I still am being a director, I found out
about the whole alternic think. When I told the board about it, they
immediately decided to invest in excess of $30,000 to establish precences
within those new namespaces and I was allowed to immediately expend 10,000
to research it out.
However they never bothered to go ahead with it. The main reason was my
report back to them which advised most of it was nonsence. The technicals
were there but my people were not impressed with the people involved in
the process. I basically told my board I only found alot of techs
daydreaming - but not much more.
> I agree 100%. But there is barrels of money in selling second-level
> domains under officially approved gTLDs - especially the new gTLDs
> when they become available.
agreed. the main think which interests the business type is an easy to
use and remember name. The only think a business type cares when it comes
to names is not how sweet they smell - but can those names make them
money.
> Not really...many domains are valuable just because of the name.
> Take sex.com, business.com, internet.com, question.com, x.com,
> etc. And instant value can come out of words/phrases that don't
> even exist after a major event - ie. trenchcoatmafia.com
Much of that is superficial and based on a monopoly environment. Yes
http://business.com/ is valuable - but http://business/ would be worth
more to the business type. dot.com is a temporary glitch kept alive by a
dns monopoly. Once you break the monopoly - you break the value and
remove the artificial pricing structure which currently exists.
Many business types who understand the nature of dns - also understand the
fact value in names is inflated.
> I'm talking about registrars that register second-level domains under
> official gTLDs - and of course the registry makes a nice profit too.
Yup - that what I'm talking about too. I don't think it's going to
happen. Were going to see alot of bankruptcies in the .com .org and .net
registrars. Alot of them, certainly the CORE ones are coming face to face
with reality. DOn't be surprised if network solutions ends up lowering
their 6 bucks a domain.
>
> As far as ccTLDs...they fizzled out becomes there's too many and
> people are used to three letter extensions. Sounds dumb, but true.
Not dumb at all - very accurate. People learn a specific patter or
structure to namespace organization. If they don't know anything else
exists, when they see an alternate format of organization - they panic.
Typical psycho reactions. An example would be web addresses. People
expect tformat of http://www.whatever.tld/. If they see an address like
http://whatever.tld/ - they panic. The patter is unatural to them.
Also - the cctld's I've seen out there have no idea of how to market their
spaces. I've seen some really wacky ideas which simply don't sell because
business types have very little time for wacky ideas. Alot of the sites I
see remind me of techs trying to sell some marijuana induced halucination.
> If ICANN officially designates .WEB for example as a gTLD, the people
> who register domains under it will make tons of money. Of course the
> unofficial operators of .WEB will get nothing other than legal trouble and
> in this aspect I agree that people who take it upon themselves to start
> unofficial gTLDs won't make money; more likely bleed lots of money.
That won't happen. You'll find that when ICANN opens up the gtld space,
alot of people on the net will wake up and ask - well - why not dot.this
or dot.that.
At this time, a majority of those 200 million surfers have no idea the
namespace can be expanded. Many of them just assume it's fixed. Once
they find out it's flexible - ICANN will either go with the flow - or be
left behind.
Regards
Joe Baptista
