[At-Large] Notice of Motion: update to ALAC advice on gTLDs

Evan Leibovitch evan at telly.org
Mon Dec 19 17:52:11 UTC 2011


On 19 December 2011 11:32, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:


> Back in the 1990s, it seemed plausible that people might use TLDs as
> a diretory.  Fifteen years later, we know that people use Google as
> an index, and that most users are only vaguely aware that there are TLDs
> other than .COM and perhaps their local ccTLD.  There was a
> hypothesis that new TLDs would provide meaningful competition to .COM.  Now
> we know that's not true either, and saying "competition" a thousand more
> times won't make it so.


Well said.

It is conveniently glossed over that new gTLDs have negligible effect
adding competition applicable to end users. For them, the choice of domain
is made by their preferred content providers (as registrants), they
themselves have no choice and the issue of competition between TLDs is
moot. The end-user choice -- and the related competition and quite the
hotbed of innovation -- is not really between TLDs, but rather whether to
use domain names at all instead of history-aware search engines, mobile
apps, URL shorteners and many other means to connect them to their
preferred content sources and service providers.


It looks like the IDN ccTLDs are working more or less as they're supposed
> to, but asking for new ASCII TLDs or new generic TLDs is just stubbornness
> in the face of reality.
>

It's not stubbornness. There is too much money out there available from
registry investors, speculators and defensive registrations to allow this
to evolve naturally.

- Evan



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