Ask HN:
How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
41–50 of 177 posts
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#42> The Ismaili Imamat is a supra-national entity, representing the succession of Imams since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. ( https://ismaili.imamat/#introduction ) The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Imamat. They have as good a claim to a TLD as Berlin, if not more.
There's also .va for the Vatican and .lds for the Mormon faith (and .mormon), and more generic Christian ones like .church. I didn't find any for other religions on a casual search, perhaps because many of them don't have the same degree of centralization.
.VA is a country code TLD, assigned because it is listed in ISO-3166. The others are "generic top-level domains" which had to go through ICANN's new gTLD program, which has a lot of rules (338 pages of them for the 2012 round) and costs a lot of money (US$185K to start with recurrent fees dependent upon the number of registrations). I suspect it isn't about centralization, but rather about perceived cost/benefit ratios.
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#43Presumably way the same as .google and all the other special-purpose organization-specific domains. Blame ICANN for allowing any public or private organization who can meet the requirements to buy and operate a gTLD back in 2012: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs... And as per another comment in this thread, they’re doing another round of this in 2026: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…
Time for another DNS root system. Maybe. /s
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Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question: why “blame”? Does it really matter?
DNS allows search so we really should have started rejecting everything that isn't qualified with an end dot as punishment to ICANN.. Instead random common names might be treated differently on every network to make sure these people can't issue certs that will be trusted for them in your own network, etc. Now prioratizing unambiguos naming would be somewhat acceptable if ICANN was tacobell and just a steward of nami…
I'm not sure what you mean by "DNS allows search" -- by the usual definition of "search", the DNS doesn't: it is a lookup mechanism. I'm also not sure who "we" are in your idea or what you mean by "qualified with an end dot": all domains that get looked up implicitly have a "." (a zero length label that signifies the end of the query name) if it isn't explicit.
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#45Is there even a good reason to have TLDs at this point?
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#46Presumably way the same as .google and all the other special-purpose organization-specific domains. Blame ICANN for allowing any public or private organization who can meet the requirements to buy and operate a gTLD back in 2012: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs... And as per another comment in this thread, they’re doing another round of this in 2026: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…
The fact that private entities can monopolize gTLDs, including words that aren't even made-up or reasonably copy-written (e.g. the MAN group in Europe owns .man) was an embarrassing and dishonorable decision by ICANN. I'm all for having tons of weird, awesome gTLDs, and I'm even for brand-specific gTLDs like .google, but the cost these entities should incur by asking for one to be created is: Anyone can use it. 1. A…
What should happen with the proceeds of the sales?
Is the highest bidder really the best custodian of a tld?
Why have a quota of, as you say, 250 every 10 years? What does this do to help, what issues does it address?
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
DNS allows search so we really should have started rejecting everything that isn't qualified with an end dot as punishment to ICANN.. Instead random common names might be treated differently on every network to make sure these people can't issue certs that will be trusted for them in your own network, etc. Now prioratizing unambiguos naming would be somewhat acceptable if ICANN was tacobell and just a steward of nami…
I'm not sure what you mean by "DNS allows search" -- by the usual definition of "search", the DNS doesn't: it is a lookup mechanism. I'm also not sure who "we" are in your idea or what you mean by "qualified with an end dot": all domains that get looked up implicitly have a "." (a zero length label that signifies the end of the query name) if it isn't explicit.
resolv.conf-> search
If you are not a consumer on an ISP emulating dialup it is quite likely that a popular name in a naming convention I.e. 'mercury' resolves to something for you and something for someone at a different firm (mercury.intranet.[firm].not-so-stupid-tld). A cert is possibly not a fully qualified one so when ICANN gives away mercury you need to append .asshat to everything ICANN names.
(Two firms have an unambiguous situation because they don't trust each others private roots but they both trust a cert issued for the public trust as a fqdn which is why TLDs expanding is a form of theft/breakage against every intranet..)
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#48Wasn't it better when only .com mattered? There are thousands of TLDs now and that forces companies to buy multiple, these domain names are not even memorable anymore specifically because of the TLD part.
Well, it depends. If all you were interested in was getting a "good" (e.g., short) name in .COM, no.
In the late 90s, when NSF allowed Network Solutions to charge for domain names, people complained that they (now Verisign) had a monopoly, so after a number of fine lunches and dinners in far off exotic places (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAHC), there was a proposal to create more top-level domains, created the registry/registrar split, proposed the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (primarily for Intellectual Property owners), etc. Then, the US government stepped in and started a process that led to the creation of ICANN.
The whole point of this exercise was to introduce competition into the domain name system. It did with the registry/registrar split and tried with the registries by having multiple rounds of a limited number of new top-level domains. However, the latter was kind of stupid (IMHO): the switching costs for changing TLDs is way too high for the existence of new TLDs to significantly impact Verisign's monopoly -- instead, it created a bunch of monopolies.
However, people weren't happy with the "limited number" part of ICANN's efforts to introduce competition in the TLD space, so in 2012, the ICANN community (which anyone can be a part of) opened the flood gates, removed the arbitrary restrictions on how new top-level domains could be created, and we now have over 1500 TLDs.
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#49Is there even a good reason to have TLDs at this point?
The DNS is hierarchical. How would you replace TLDs?
Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
#50> The Ismaili Imamat is a supra-national entity, representing the succession of Imams since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. ( https://ismaili.imamat/#introduction ) The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Imamat. They have as good a claim to a TLD as Berlin, if not more.
> ismaili.imamat
So, a quite expensive domain hack? Are they trending again? There's even a list on domainhacks.club