I've seen several negative reactions to this decision which I find to be odd since my reaction was very positive. Here are my reasons why this is awesome:<p>-It opens up vast new swaths of web territory and makes it easier for the ordinary Joe Hacker to find a memorable web address<p>-It devalues cyber-squatters current portfolios<p>-It seems arbitrary to limit TLDs to a certain subset of characters in the first place<p>Is there something I'm missing? Why all the anguish out there?<p>edit: Actually, doesn't the existence of TLDs seem arbitrary, too? Why end every URL with .SomeString?
This is useless, all this will do is line ICANN's pockets with money.<p>The .com will always be king, so it'll remain THE name for people to get. Look at the current domains, how many do you see going for the .us? .biz? domain extensions?<p>The whole "Big businesses will use it to make it easier for consumer is pretty dumb too", you can go to toys.ebay.com now, and get where you want to be, all this'll do is make you go to toys.ebay.<p>Third try typing that out...you'll be halfway to typing out .com before you realize you don't need it.<p>Its just a way for ICANN to make money. Nothing more, this will do nothing to help the consumer, and is only there so that Google will spend another 5 mil a year Google.paris, Google.France, google.uk, google.hackernews<p>We might as well go back to AOL Keywords
From the BBC article on the topic:<p><i>"Does Tesco want .supermarket or .groceries?" said Graham Hales, of branding consultancy Interbrand.<p>"Or maybe it wants .value or .everylittlehelps. The choice is endless."</i><p>While this may address the lack of domain names now available thanks to squatters and collectors, it'll make the web a mess! It's already bad enough with some of the more exotic domain names in use, but with custom TLDs it'd be easier to just memorize the IP address instead!
I think it's going to be a lot harder to get yourself a TLD than people think. In addition to the large sum of money, you also have to prove that it isn't offensive and doesn't infringe on anyone's rights and "the business or organization must prove that they are either capable of managing the TLD or can reach a deal with a company that will" [from the ArsTechnica article]. These obviously won't be issues for the eBays and Amazons of the world, but how many squatters will actually be able to prove they can manage a TLD? I'm no expert, but there's gotta be some huge technical and maintenance issues there.<p>I'm also curious if people who register TLDs will be required to allow the general public to register domain names under them.
I was in favor of this kind of thing and supported AlterNIC in the early 90's, but I'm not so sure about this new change. ICANN wants to charge how much? AlterNIC was free, and so are other alternate DNS roots.