
New Top-Level Domains - bachback
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings
======
chrisacky
22+ of the approved domains from the list of 30 are all signed to a a single
startup[0] called Donuts[1]. ( [http://www.donuts.co/](http://www.donuts.co/)
)

Apparently they raised $100M[2] back in 2012.

They have since agreed to distribute these domains through 19 registrars[3]
(eNom, Name.com etc)...

Looking at their ICANN PIC submission[4] they have registered no fewer than
200-250 LLCs

[0] : [https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/694)

[1] :
[http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts](http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts)

[2] : [http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-
fu...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-funding/)

[3] : [http://www.donuts.co/news/donuts-adds-another-seven-
generic-...](http://www.donuts.co/news/donuts-adds-another-seven-generic-top-
level-domains-to-the-internet-signs-19-additional-registrars/)

[4] : [https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-
result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails:downloadpicposting/694?t:ac=694)

~~~
pkfrank
[http://www.donuts.co/about/team/](http://www.donuts.co/about/team/)

Do a ctrl+f for "ICANN" and you'll see how well-networked the Donuts.co team
is. Can't be sure if this is true cronyism, or whether they just really know
how to play the game. Not sure it's terribly different either way.

\--Edit--

per chrisacky's link above
([http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-
fu...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-funding/)),
it looks like Donuts.co submitted 307 applications at $185k/per, for a total
of $56.8 million. That's a hell of a way to earn favors with ICANN while
ostensibly just trying to get more picks.

------
dsl
You can see what a huge scam and insider money play this was by just looking
at the names of the companies that got these TLDs.

~~~
archQuestions
If you're looking for a more open source approach to domain names, check out
[http://namecoin.info](http://namecoin.info) and [http://dot-
bit.org](http://dot-bit.org)

~~~
lukifer
I was a little disappointed to learn that NameCoin domains are so cheap (0.001
NMC), and therefore rampant with squatters. I suppose there will always be an
incentive to create a market and seek rents no matter what the domain system.
Nonetheless, I hope NameCoin or something like it gains greater traction.

I found myself wondering the other day how long it will be before we see an
attempted disruption of Google by a search crypto-currency.

~~~
tocomment
That's a really intriguing idea. How do you imagine it working?

~~~
nwh
It can't, really. There's nothing remotely like web indexing in a crypto
currency. Indexing websites is massively storage and bandwidth intensive,
something which a distributed blockchain is not designed for. It's a nice idea
to make a distributes search engine, but has nothing to do with Bitcoin.

~~~
lukifer
Yeah, I wasn't implying that the specifics of BitCoin would work well for a
hypothetical SearchCoin. NameCoin is feasible because the volume of data is
much smaller, both for keys and values, and updated infrequently.

------
scott_karana
In the short term, I'm not too worried: consumers not wanting to enter
long/weird domains will probably cause most of these to fade into obscurity.

On the other hand: is ICANN completely broken? This could have more serious
ramifications down the road...

~~~
0x0
I think it's super suspect that ICANN, a non-profit organization with a
purpose to maintain "the stable and secure operation" of the Internet (as
described by Wikipedia), can allow this to happen.

Do these additional generic top-level domains bring _any_ benefits - beyond
being a license to print money for the tld sponsor&registrars?

~~~
dangerlibrary
Do they have any meaningful costs?

~~~
0x0
One pretty big cost is the risk of confusion when visiting
"somebrandname.sometld", especially if it's a different entity from the ".com"
domain.

It can also be a cost (both moneywise and as a time sink) for brands wishing
to protect their identify, if the number of tlds increases with a magnitude.
(Multiplied by the number of misspellings and hyphenations etc).

It's probably likely to break a lot of (buggy) software (just try entering an
@example.museum email around the web today).

Non-technical people are likely to be confused (so increased support costs,
re-education, etc).

What happens to a gTLD and all the registered subdomains, when its sponsoring
corporation goes under?

The DNS root zone grows, which may have undesirable costs for caching
nameservers and DNS traffic.

It feels like a waste of energy and time that a _non-profit_ like ICANN could
have used for more constructive work.

~~~
bachback
good points.

In terms of the semantics: in the end it's up to people using it. I'm more
worried about profiteering than confusion. But it's for the market to figure
it out.

I don't think the traffic is significant. caching is very easy - you don't
need to have all 10^12 - 10^15 domains on disk and even if the size per record
is tiny.

Bugs are less significant than possible collisions and fraud.

Definitely agree with the sentiment that ICANN is broken.

------
joshmlewis
It's interesting to see a lot of the domain endings are longer than the
standard domains today. It'll be interesting to see what they do with them.
Some of the choices seem a little odd considering the price to pay, such as
.bike, .guru, or .tips.

I don't like that people (with money) will start buying up these generic top
level domains and have complete control over who uses them. I would rather see
a non-profit registrar of sorts but I know that would probably never happen.

~~~
yeldarb
I could see .tips and .gugu could making some sense. eg iphone.tips, php.guru,
etc. But .bike is definitely weird.

~~~
DrewRWx
trek.bike ?

Owning the TLD will probably ensure top ranking in that keyword's search
results.

~~~
pkfrank
It would definitely help, but I don't think it'd be a silver bullet.

[http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors](http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors)

I'm seeing the domain name considerations well below bigger factors (link
juice, page rank, etc.)

------
yeldarb
Really hoping nobody registers ".js" \-- would wreak havoc on searches for a
lot of common Javascript libraries like "underscore.js"

Similarly I could see someone registering the ".html" or ".php" tld and
causing some huge issues.

Although I must admit, owning the domain "index.html" would endow huge nerd
cred.

~~~
binarymax
Two letter gtlds are reserved for countries only.

~~~
pkfrank
To nitpick, "gtlds" are generic top level domains (.com, .net, .etc), while
the reserved two-letter tlds are ccTLDs (country-code top level domains).

------
yeldarb
Do we know yet how browsers will be treating these tlds? Eg if I type
"diamonds" into the Chrome omnibar will it take me to a Google search for
"diamonds" or to [http://diamonds](http://diamonds)

~~~
dsl
ICANN made a decision late in the game to not allow "dotless" domains, i.e.
making "diamonds" resolve to something the TLD owner decides.

This crushed the business model of most of the new TLD operators, so don't
expect them to be around in a few years.

~~~
molecule
following up, ICANN's announcement and reasoning:
[http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-30au...](http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-30aug13-en.htm)

~~~
sp332
_The most prominent example is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to
deliver electronic mail. It requires at least two labels in the FQDN of a mail
address. Thus standard-compliant mail servers would reject emails to addresses
such as user@brand._

Do most mail servers follow this rule?

~~~
nwh
I remember some ccTLD had A records a while back (bs. was one), but they
lacked MX. I think it would just cause lots of form validation errors if that
suddenly changed, not to mention the confusion you'd cause with people
expecting a suffix. I cause enough issues with not having a ".com" on my email
address, people love adding a .com.

------
perlpimp
Well, I wonder how that affects mobile. Since there is a move to mobile app
topology of information consumption, wonder if domain names will still be
relevant 5 years from now.

On the same note why TLDs, not just have a 'name registry'. Seems like
technical dictates what is not natural. Why I can't have website name for
example "burger" or "pizza" I get that there are designations and control
entities. But isn't it a bit contrived? I am not against dot notation but
whole synthetic user facing naming system...

~~~
hayksaakian
you CAN technically do that in this way

if you buy .pizza you could technically host one website at

[http://www.pizza](http://www.pizza)

~~~
amybe
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but www is just another subdomain.
[http://www.pizza](http://www.pizza) is technically no different from
[http://superawesometasty.pizza](http://superawesometasty.pizza).

~~~
bachback
No - if pizza is owned by one TLD registrar www.pizza and great.pizza would be
two separate subdomains under that TLD. I'm not sure there are limitations to
the subdomain under the TLD (to prevent collision with www). Someone can
register www under .com and make a www.www.com.

~~~
amybe
I wasn't saying they were interchangeable, just that _on a technical level_
[http://www.pizza](http://www.pizza) and
[http://great.pizza](http://great.pizza) function in exactly the same way, as
far as DNS is concerned.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for most browsers, but that's another
topic...

And I'm sure www is a reserved term under most of the new TLDs. Haven't
checked though.

------
harvestmoon
We don't need 50 crappy new domain extensions. We just need one new one that
works well like .com.

Personally, I had high hopes for .co, but it doesn't seem too well adopted
yet.

~~~
amybe
It's definitely getting there. It seems .io is where it's at, though, despite
the price.

------
gesman
Why waste time with useless and long TLD's and not introduce a single-letter
TLD's, such as .a .b .c ...etc ?

Or .js - to make Silicon Valley go orgasmic?

------
ivthreadp110
Look at the trends- It's very funny-- the language generator... Almost all
these domains are owned by one entity.

------
earlz
These domains appear to be going for $30/year, at least the ones operated by
Donuts (ie, most). See [http://www.101domain.com/domain-availability-
search.htm](http://www.101domain.com/domain-availability-search.htm) and then
search for foobar.bike

------
lelandbatey
Looking at this, I see the reference to a couple of different dates. There's
the "Sunrise Open" and the "Sunrise Close" dates, then there's the "General
Availability" date. What does each mean?

~~~
tombrossman
Gandi does a pretty good job explaining this [1] as a 'trademark brand
protection phase'. Basically, if you have a registered trademark and want to
defend it from others registering <YourTrademark>.<NewTLD> your opportunity to
do so is during this phase. The rest of us commoners get to by the leftovers
starting on the General Availibility date.

[1] [http://www.gandibar.net/post/2013/10/29/The-launch-of-the-
ne...](http://www.gandibar.net/post/2013/10/29/The-launch-of-the-new-gTLDs)

~~~
lelandbatey
Ah, alright. That explains it, thank you!

------
jotm
Oh. no - not language specific TLDs! They wanted to introduce them like 7
years ago, and a lot of people agreed that it would just be a detriment to the
Internet as we know it (freely accessible and global).

~~~
perlgeek
Don't you think that .com and .info and .biz etc. already are language
specific? They are just specific to the/a language you happen to speak.

~~~
asdfaoeu
There's no reason to have a separate namespace though. .com in other languages
should just map to .com domains.

------
talles
I love the .today domain.

Anyone knows which registrars are supporting these new domains?

~~~
kyriakos
I am with the impression that they wont be made available to the public - or
at least not for a flat fee.

~~~
0x0
Actually I was of the impression that new gTLDs wouldn't be accepted unless
they were generic enough and available to the public. (so no buying ".google")

------
emehrkay
.guru seems like a good one with tons of app/saas appeal

------
scottshea
I am sure someone proposed the .meow or .cat domains. I just wonder how far
they got

~~~
benjiweber
.cat already exists
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat)

~~~
signed0
[http://www.nyan.cat/](http://www.nyan.cat/)

------
gesman
Can we have this TLD:

.yetanotherkindausefulbutmaybenottld ? :)

------
fakename
still holding out for clownpenis.fart

------
amerika_blog
Might as well just start using freetext at this point. Register your search
term with Google, then forget about it.

~~~
yogo
Sounds like the AOL keyword days. :)

------
dlsx
I have brokered .com domains for many startups over the past few years, and I
can say almost every time the domain was fairly priced and a deal was reached
without too much negotiating or time wasted.

I really think a lot of startups shoot themselves in the foot by just saying
"everything in .com is taken." Well maybe, but that doesn't mean you can't pay
$2-5k and actually secure your domain.

What I am saying is shelling out a few grand now for the appropriate .com will
save you loads of time and headaches than if you try to brand on non dot-com
and eventually realize you can't live without it.

~~~
bachback
I think I disagree. .com is mostly a historic artefact. how about my.startup?

~~~
dragonwriter
> how about my.startup?

Why would you want "startup" as part of your permanent brand identity?

