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The organization managing all Top Level Domains,
ICANN, has today
announced the approval of a new proposal, which will allow
basically anyone to get their own Top Level Domain. I may be
conservative, longing for the good old days of the Internet, but I
don't like this.
The Internet as it is right now is already a chaos. The list of
Top Level Domains is growing fast. But it doesn't make things more
clear. Take for instance the .jobs Top Level Domain. What exactly
does this add to the available list? Most companies still list
their vacancies on their website, and they'll probably keep doing
this. Why? Well, potential candidates will get a good impression of
the company, and (potential) clients will see that the company is
quite busy because it is looking for new people, so it must be
doing something good, right? Having job openings on your website is
always good marketing. So why the hell add a new Top Level Domain
for it?
With this new proposal accepted, as it is implemented (Q1 2009
most probably), organizations worldwide will be able to apply for
their own Top Level Domain. In the buzz about this announcement on
the web, I see examples such as .ebay. Now, please explain to me,
aside from Ebay wanting to protect their trademark, why the hell
would anyone want a .ebay address. What would be the purpose? There
is only one Ebay, and it's easily reachable by going to Ebay.com
(or any of the local versions).
I have this crazy theory about this whole proposal. It's a
theory so wild that none of you would've ever thought of it. This
theory consists of a single word.
MONEY
I don't know why, because I've always believed ICANN to be a
non-profit organization put in place to ensure the safety and
availability of the whole domain system, but it seems that ICANN is
quite anxious to get new money in. I mean, it doesn't sound really
useful, but well, what can you do? If you are a multi-million
international company, you need to protect your trademark, so you
will have to shell out the cash to register your own TLD.
So it will be easy money for ICANN. Very easy money.
The only good thing that I've seen in the proposal is the fact
that they also want to implement top level domains with other
characters than the current limited set of 37 characters, so
countries with different character sets, such as China, Japan, the
Arab world and Russia, will finally be able to get their "native"
domains.
Since the proposal has already been accepted, I'm afraid there
will be little that can be done to stop this. I surely wonder how
this will play out, but I'm not looking forward to this whole new
dimension in the chaos of domains.
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