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New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

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Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#11
post #3

I understand that the current situation is a bit of a money grab, but what is the rational for TLDs not being arbitrary in the first place? Isn't it all just letters anyways?

I think it would be useful if the companies buying the TLDs were not allowed to buy more than 100 or so of 2nd level domains within that TLD and forced the price to be something non-trivial like $30.

Then owning all the 2nd level domains would be prohibitively expensive and would actually be useful for people coming up with a good domain name.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#12
post #4
post #2

I don't consider this a surprise at all. I see these new ads for things like ".digital" and ".media" and the only thing I can think of is using them for vanity, such as xyzcompany.media and then using that internally. It's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.

To know that abc.media is a media company while abc.auto is a car company would be good for the user. It makes them less likely to click the wrong link. Really, more TLDs should just provide a finer grain of information to the previous '.com is a company and .org is an organisation'. There's no 'pollution' if you're only refining an idea. It's not like .com is going away. Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as fa…

Click a link? Where? 99% of the people just Google for stuff and rarely even look at the domain names anymore. They would click a link in Google search results and Google would already filter if it's a car or media company you are looking for.

The only use case where domain name is actually used is when you need to tell someone to go to some website or give them your e-mail over the phone. Especially if it's your website. New TLDs are still fresh and people get confused. If it doesn't end with .com, they want to add .com themselves. You need to spend time and energy explaining - which would take a lot longer than just having an extra word in proper .com domain.

I guess people will get used to new TLDs in time. But that time is yet to come.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#13
This is not surprising but I fail to see the downside. The internet is complex already. The new top level domains won't add much to that.

  I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs)," he said.
I run a lot of websites and it was a pain to find good domain names in the last 15 years. With all the new TLDs that problem is completely gone.

There will be a time when the multitude of TLDs won't bother anyone. Limiting TLDs doesn't add security. Educating people about the dangers of the internet does.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#15
Maybe the way it happened involved corruption. But I personally like the new TLD's, not all of them but some like .team, .work, .chat.

A few other sports specific domains are also nice, like .soccer, .tennis, .football ...

Almost all of the meaningful .com's .org's and .net's are gone. It's time we had new TLD's that make more sense.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#16
post #2

I don't consider this a surprise at all. I see these new ads for things like ".digital" and ".media" and the only thing I can think of is using them for vanity, such as xyzcompany.media and then using that internally. It's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.

".com" forever? There is no reason we can have better naming systems. Consider ".io". It's often used by startups and signals quite a lot about a domain.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#17
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To know that abc.media is a media company while abc.auto is a car company would be good for the user. It makes them less likely to click the wrong link. Really, more TLDs should just provide a finer grain of information to the previous '.com is a company and .org is an organisation'. There's no 'pollution' if you're only refining an idea. It's not like .com is going away. Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as fa…

Click a link? Where? 99% of the people just Google for stuff and rarely even look at the domain names anymore. They would click a link in Google search results and Google would already filter if it's a car or media company you are looking for. The only use case where domain name is actually used is when you need to tell someone to go to some website or give them your e-mail over the phone. Especially if it's your web…

New TLDs are still fresh and people get confused

I wouldn't worry about that too much. The general public concept of the Internet is really not all that old (15-20 years). People will adjust remarkably quickly.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#18
Maybe Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla could get together, and configure their OSes and browsers to do DNS lookups by default using a system different than ICANN's via security updates.

That would make ICANN mostly irrelevant in less than a year.

Also, it improves security, since you are already trusting your browser vendor and would no longer need to trust ICANN, registrars and the CA system as well.

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#19

This is not surprising but I fail to see the downside. The internet is complex already. The new top level domains won't add much to that. I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs)," he said. I run a lot of websites and it was a pain to find good domain names in the last 15 years. With all the new TLDs that problem is completel…

Yeah a bit of pain, but at least you prevent some confusions, like "is it fr.microsoft or microsoft.software?" What if it happens that your company name is registered for another TLD and people start seeing it as a legit instance of your service?

What if you're a bank and somebody gets a TLD like "yourbank.bank" with valid SSL and starts fishing people from yourbank.com?

Re: New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

#20
post #4
post #2

I don't consider this a surprise at all. I see these new ads for things like ".digital" and ".media" and the only thing I can think of is using them for vanity, such as xyzcompany.media and then using that internally. It's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.

To know that abc.media is a media company while abc.auto is a car company would be good for the user. It makes them less likely to click the wrong link. Really, more TLDs should just provide a finer grain of information to the previous '.com is a company and .org is an organisation'. There's no 'pollution' if you're only refining an idea. It's not like .com is going away. Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as fa…

host/domain name is way to overabused, people should be using info resouce to find the site they are looking for. This way chrome stepped in the right direction moving people away from domains. There can be other software/internet constructs to navigate to right result, domain names are just vanity plates. It helps it if it easier to type the domain up but only for maybe top 10 sites that you use. Those sites are already there and are well known. for the rest autocomplete, bookmarks and history are used.

what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error. Granted this is not how most users use firefox host tab. However it is clear case where corporate greed breaks organically grown infrastructure, in our office we use 8.8.8.8 and thats how I know about it.

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