Google owns TLDs: .web .meme and .lol

Post by amelius » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #37

nothis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a commercial company own a top level domain like ".app"? I get that they own .youtube or .google but isn't that way too generic? Like a company owning the copyright for the word "Company"?

These companies don't really "own" the names. They're paying $180k/yr for the privilege of ICANN delegating the responsibility of managing that gTLD to them. But this privilege isn't any kind of legal right; the company doesn't have a deed to or easement on that gTLD that would hold up in court. ICANN has just agreed, as their side of the contract, to 1. accept that company's zone-registration modifications vis-a-vis…

Post by doublerabbit » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #45

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #41

Could someone write a browser extension to override DNS? And basically create a new domain system for people with that extension installed?

Something similar was attempted decades ago and failed, with alternate DNS roots. See AlterNIC for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlterNIC

Post by longtailofsighs » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #37

nothis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a commercial company own a top level domain like ".app"? I get that they own .youtube or .google but isn't that way too generic? Like a company owning the copyright for the word "Company"?

These companies don't really "own" the names. They're paying $180k/yr for the privilege of ICANN delegating the responsibility of managing that gTLD to them. But this privilege isn't any kind of legal right; the company doesn't have a deed to or easement on that gTLD that would hold up in court. ICANN has just agreed, as their side of the contract, to 1. accept that company's zone-registration modifications vis-a-vis…

Post by dijit » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

steventhedev wrote: post #56

dijit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were using .dev locally before then you almost certainly didn’t have TLS, since it’s usually local testing. By making TLS mandatory you not only break local dev environments (that use that TLD which maybe have a legitimate domain outside of your network) you also make it so that it’s not even possible to run locally unless you do a lot of CA trickery to get a legit looking TLS cert. My personal opinion was tha…

The fact that it broke anything for anyone is a strong argument that it never should have been created in the first place, alongside .home and .corp. They were aware of the issue, buried it in the report and reneged on their promise to keep it internal-only. That was the mitigating argument for allowing it despite the known existing usage. Google acted in bad faith and I'd need to see concrete proof to convince me ot…

Post by saxonww » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

josefx wrote: post #20

Closi wrote: post #8

If ICANN wasn't just a giant extortion racket they would have yanked this from Google squatting on it years ago - clearly they haven't actually met any of the listed goals considering they have never used the TLD (or opened them for general availability like their original application implies). In reality all ICANN cares about is $$$

Hasn't that been obvious for years? As far as I remember there were attempts to sell of lucrative parts of ICANNs responsibilities to private businesses that where coincidentally owned by the very people that made the decision to sell. The whole organization is openly corrupt and doesn't really try to hide it.