

New York City Launches .nyc Domain Names - uptown
http://www.mydotnyc.com/

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duskwuff
They're "launching" the TLD before their application has even been
_approved_?!

EDIT: My mistake, their site just doesn't mention the approval. Confirmed in
replies.

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mcintyre1994
Their FAQ includes "When can I register a .nyc domain name?

Domain names are currently expected to become available in late 2013 after
ICANN approves the City’s application. "

and

"Upon acceptance of its application for the .nyc domain, the City of New York
intends to enter into an agreement with ICANN under which it will have control
over the administration and management of the .nyc domain."

Perhaps they know more than us, but they seem very confident that they'll be
getting approved. Nobody else applied for .nyc, but I don't recall it ever
being indicated that was enough to guarantee approval.

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kyrias
Yeah, .nyc is such a narrow area that it doesn't deserve it's own TLD.

~~~
jweir
Would any country smaller, economically or in population, than NYC also be too
narrow to deserve its own TLD?

~~~
mcintyre1994
I think the difference is in degrees of independence. That's obviously way too
subjective (and would become political), but my point is that a small
independent island nation is more independent than NYC, which is obviously
'just' a big city in the USA. NYC is served completely by .us or .com which
anecdotally seems to be used heavily within the USA, while generic small
island nation isn't served by any tld sufficiently.

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thrush
The only motivation behind this is absurd profit for those selling domain
names, and I doubt that NYC will even see that money (does anybody know more
information about this?).

Otherwise, I don't see how this would help a company identify in any useful
way especially because we are talking about internet addresses here. How would
ordering a product from webstore.nyc be any more helpful than webstore.com? It
seems like a useless novelty, and will add more complexity and confusion to
URL's in general as other cities get their own TLD's from the US and globally.

~~~
mattzito
Registrars are a very low-margin business these days. I assume you mean
registry.

~~~
thrush
Thanks for pointing that out. I edited to have a broader meaning, because I
think there is a potential exploitation done by domain squatters in addition.

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aclevernickname
This is interesting. I take this as another step towards New York City being
recognized as a nation of it's own, much like The City [1] and Vatican City
[2]. The United Nations HQ is already based there, so it has a good claim to
said sovereignty.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_city)

~~~
anigbrowl
The city of London is not a nation. I think you misread the Wikipedia article;
as well as being a separate city, it's a separate _county_ , not _country_.

I personally like the idea of independent city-states but historically they
have not fared terribly well. I think you'll see a resurgence of this idea in
outer space in the coming decades.

~~~
frozenport
Venice, Florance, Singapore, Hong Kong? Rome was originally a city state.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's a pretty small number of success stories relative to the # of potential
candidates, no? Also, none of them except Singapore is still fully self-
determining, and Singapore is on a pretty small island rather than being
embedded in a larger land mass.

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MichaelGG
"Finding a search result that is located in NYC can be challenging. Search
engines often generate millions of results. Make your NYC business,
organization or content easier for users to find."

How exactly is .nyc going to help in search results? Are we to believe that
Google's going to give special priority to new sites just because they have
.nyc?

Also, the "offers services to New Yorkers" makes it sound like it's going to
be pretty open to any site, diminishing the (albeit limited) point.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Hmm, Google do treat TLDs very sensibly for their country specific websites,
at least in the UK I get pretty smart results including .co.uk stuff. I think
that's based off the fact I search from google.co.uk, which they automate a
redirect to - not sure if they could do that for NYC residents as easily.

That said, I'd speculate that Google will deal with these new ones
intelligently. Not only because they have a huge amount of applications for
them, but also because if they do take off it'd be silly for a search engine
not to be dealing with them appropriately.

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greenyoda
It would be confusing if a NYC business with a .nyc domain relocated to SF.
This domain would probably be most useful for city government agencies or
institutions like the Museum of Natural History that are never likely to
relocate. More generic TLDs make it much easier to geographically relocate
your business.

~~~
saalweachter
Most businesses aren't web businesses. bobstacos.nyc, joespromdesses.nyc,
tekserve.nyc, saks.nyc, perse.nyc, et cetera et cetera.

~~~
greenyoda
But a non-web business, even a fairly small one, can also move out of NYC or
open additional branches outside NYC as it expands. For example, I know a
sushi restaurant that has two branches in NYC and one in NJ. For that matter,
Saks has several stores outside of NYC: Boston, Philadelphia, etc. Tying your
brand to a .nyc domain could be quite limiting and make your locations outside
NYC harder to search for.

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fjdghsd
This is actually pretty cool. Over here in Europe every (most) websites end in
a country specific TLD so we know where the website is based. We can see
instantly a .fr domain means the website/store is based in France, or .de for
Germany, etc and so on. It's not common at all to have a .com for your
website.

I suspect in America it's going to be really confusing for people though
because as far as I can tell everything is a .com. People probably won't be so
keen on adopting a .nyc domain for their NYC based business because everything
else is a .com so it might seem lesser or cheap or "not the real thing."

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ErsatzVerkehr
We do have the (neglected) .us domain. New York City should be .ny.ny.us

~~~
prodigal_erik
It's nyc.ny.us, which is actually in use already. This display of ignorance is
a very badly-scaling use of the one and only namespace DNS has.

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jere
>Who can register .nyc domains?

>New York City businesses and organizations with a NYC address, individuals
with a primary residence in NYC, _as well as those offering products or
services to New Yorkers_ can register a .nyc domain name.

Isn't that pretty much every nonlocal web app?

~~~
ethomson
Yes. Further down in the FAQ, it clarifies that .nyc is available to
everybody, but preference will be given to those with a NYC address. (It
doesn't further clarify, but I assume that means that in the immediate rush of
registrations, when two people attempt to purchase the same domain name,
preference will be given to those registering with a local address.)

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minimaxir
Let the _X_.nyc goldrush begin.

s.nyc (sync), th.nyc (think), p.nyc (pink), etc...

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wcfields
st.nyc - The homepage for the hot-garbage and urine smell of the big apple!

~~~
jweese
st.nyc - Santa's homepage.

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steele
more NYC real estate that I can't afford... 0sqft

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magikbum
Glad they wasted 200k to apply for this dumb TLD

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eruditely
Off topic: Where's my Californian's who want .cali

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jweir
Yeah, but then you would also need .nocali and .socali. Then the the .nocali
folks would be upset because .socali seems _so_ much more .cali, but the
.socali folks would be like whatever dudez.

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enahs
sex.nyc, here I come.

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notjustanymike
Wooo suck it .la and .sfc! #1! #1! #1!

~~~
IvyMike
Thanks to Laos, Los Angeles has had a domain for a while now.

[https://www.la/](https://www.la/)

~~~
adamlj
I think it's awful to rebrand another country's TLD like this. We are talking
about an extremely poor third world country. It would surprise me if any of
the profits made from www.la ever goes to someone in Lao. It would also be
very interesting to know how they acquired the rights of selling the .LA
domain since we are talking about a Socialist State which is known for its
severe corruption.

This feels like Colonization 2.0.

~~~
zokier
.la seems to have fairly colorful history:

[http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/2023248](http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/2023248)

I guess Lao is getting something from the "long-term contractual relationship"
they have entered.

