How many companies are willing to spend up to $200,000 to purchase their own domain?
The historical fare of .com, .net, or .org domains is not at stake here — but a new group of domains that are determined by each purchaser.
The current list of 21 generic top-level domains (excluding country-specific domains such as .ca and .uk) includes the fare you typically see at the tail-end of every browser URL: .com, .gov, .biz, .info, .travel, and so forth.
Companies have historically been limited in what they can buy and how they can market their brand in accordance to availability. Google owns google.com, for instance, and if you want it you either need to make Google an offer or wait until its domain registrar contract expires.
What if Google wants to purchase .google or the state of Utah wants to purchase .utah? That’s not an option today.
Companies, organizations, and individuals can not buy their own domains in the name of themselves. You can only customize the second level of the domain, such as google of google.com, not the top-level itself.
Until now.
The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (the nonprofit group that manages the interoperability of the internet, inclusive of deciding which top-level domains people can buy), makes it possible to brand your own domain.
You don’t have to worry that a particular domain is unavailable anymore because if you have the cash (and ego) to afford it, you can own your own.
Electronics manufacturers Canon and Hitachi are mulling it. You may not need to visit canon.com anymore, but, say, www.canon or marketing.canon or printers.at.canon or any other naming convention they want if they own the top level.
“We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors.
Who has the inspiration to spend the money, though?
I have some thoughts, but how about you?
About Ari Herzog
Nice article. My domain was hacked sometimes back and they put a banner “For sale $6500″. I was shocked and I totally moved away the business to a new platform and I think this can’t happen now..if it happens, they will just move on to the new domain and make the hacker smoke. As you said, if you have money..you can own your own.. This line is very very true.
Looking for a business that is registered as http://www.bongo.bongo will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. First you would probably try .com, then .net or .biz and maybe after a couple of months you would find .bongo
The other thing that occurs to me is that this change is a gift to Google because no one will type in a URL but rather they will google for the name.
By the way, the cartoon at the top of your article reminds me of the Woody Allen film where he and his buddies bought a bakery so they could tunnel under it to rob the bank next door.
The plan to rob the bank never came off, but the bakery made a fortune.
I agree with David that the new TLDs are going to make search engines even more important to us all.
Due to the fact, that I can´t really know if Coca Cola (for instance) gets a domain called .cocacola or .coke or .coca-cola or something else makes it even more difficult to find the right website.
But hey, if there are no other problems in digital world we could solve, why not…
Another question comes to mind, Peter:
How often do you notice the URL in a search result? Or do you focus on content?
I usually do notice the URL in a search result, just to get a quick opinion about the trustworthiness of the site. But I actually do focus on content. Only for instance, if I read a result stating the URL is http://www.wetakeallyourmoney.com, I get suspicious, if I was looking for Coca Cola…
Know what I mean?
You’re right Peter. There are so many sites out there would would like to have you assume that they’re the official site for a company.
It’s quite the Black Hat SEO method to put official sounding headers and descriptions out there and try to rank above the real companies to garner SERP Traffic.
Without the domain name on an Search Engine Results page I know that I’d be lost trying to discern between official and other sites.
Well said Andy… I´d be lost too…
I don’t think any “ego” is necessarily involved in wanting to choose what the second or third word in your URL is… in fact after reading this, I guess I’m mainly wondering why it took so long to have this as an option. There’s nothing inherently special about the word after the last dot, its just a tradition at this point that it be limited to one of a handful of words which basically lost their meaning a long time ago. There’s no rule preventing me from putting up a non-profit site at .biz, for instance. My only question would be, how much money are we talking here? It seems to be implied that this is some kind of expensive option (“if you can afford it” etc). Is there any real practical reason this should be significantly more costly than regular domain purchases??
fred
The brand domains clearly favor the large corporations that can pay such a fee. It will be more for prestige than anything else. Using “.com” is a habit that will be hard to break.
Like Nick says – branded domains are for the larger corporations. However, something that ICANN should consider and has been commissioned to consider (whether they will or not is a different matter) is the age old story with domain names.
Problems trickle down.
What if someone with more financial resources than Ari (a slim possibility, I know) were to register .AriHerzog as a TLD? Where would that leave Ari?
Businesses with legitimate claim to domain names shouldn’t have to fight for *their* name. However, they always will because it’s often unscrupulous persons with more money who come along to claim domains (be it TLD or not) to try to squeeze anything they can out of the rightful owner.
I fear that ICANN is looking more at finances than than rights these days.
The only way a branded TLD will work is if the brand proves legitimacy and their right to said TLD.
This would involve a lot of time, cost and paperwork for ICANN.
We wrote about this a few weeks ago Ari. Although it is potential that you could have any domain name suffix soon, you will need a pretty good justification and a lot of cash to get it to happen!
You know what I could see? http://ari.herzog/ what a great URL!
“Who has the inspiration to spend the money, though?” – Walmart, Google, Coke, Facebook… just to name a few
Good article Ari
Christopher – Technology Bloggers Admin
What is the justification for it being so expensive? Is there a practical reason or is it just because its like this fashionable exclusive boutique thing?
I think it’s to stop them getting swamped with millions of ‘silly’ applications, and also to raise some funds too!
It sounds like most of the new TLD’s will be well out of my price range, haha.
I think it will take a little while for the new TLD’s to catch on. I like when people get creative using different TLD’s, but for the time being, .com is still the standard that your average internet users are accustomed to.