ICANN and I Will – The End of the .com Domain Era

The Internet has now moved into a new era after The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted 13 - 1 in favour of accepting applications for generic top-level domains. What does this mean? It means the reign of the .com, .net, and .org domain suffixes is over. Soon they will just sit alongside a plethora of other domain suffixes with a much more focussed agenda.

Brands will now be able to apply to own their own domain suffixes such as .coke or .nike but only if they can cough up the US$185,000 application fee in the 3 month application window beginning on Jan 12, 2012. If their application is successful they will then have complete control over that domain suffix and the unlimited number of domains that come with it. It won’t be long before domains like justdoit.nike and lifesgood.lg become commonplace as will product focussed addresses like macbook.apple and z4.bmw.

Even more useful to a brand is the possibility of owning a keyword suffix for a whole market category such as .shoe, or .book. Imagine how much business harrypotter.book would generate for the company who owned the .book suffix. With unlimited .book domains at their disposal a whole market could potentially be captured.

From an SEO perspective, owning your own suffix will inevitably improve your organic search engine ranking, meaning more people will find you without advertising. Companies with valuable keyword suffixes could also potentially rank highly in specific product searches with domains like macbookpro.laptop, stealing business from the traditional online stores.

So is this a good thing overall? I think so. The .com suffix has long been used for a multitude of purposes other than commercial endeavours and in my mind has lost most of its meaning. Its been the golden-child of domain suffixes for too long and the web has evolved beyond it. The new naming system allows for future domain suffixes to be more meaningful and intuitive which I think is a positive step.

The new system will also allow for an increased level of trust and security to exist online. For example, when you type in a domain name with your banks domain suffix you can feel more confident than ever that you are in the right place. Even if you do mistype the suffix its highly unlikely that someone dodgy has invested $185k in registering your mis-spelt suffix, not to mention that ICANN is hopefully monitoring this kind of activity.

There are of course some ‘less positive’ points that need to be mentioned. The hefty price tag puts this new service out of reach of everyone other than big business and government, which means that those in power will stay in power. I know this is probably inevitable anyway, but it still doesn’t sit well with me. The price tag is apparently reflective of the investment already made in the programme and to ensure it is properly funded in the future, but its hard not to believe that this must be partly just an ICANN revenue generating exercise. Once a group of brands are granted their own suffixes there will be pressure on other similar brands to keep up with them. There will only be one big winner out of this suffix-race.

Additionally, while I see no problem with a brand being in control of their own suffix and all its domains, I don’t think things are quite as simple for non-brands like cities. Both Sydney and Melbourne are both apparently interested in securing the .sydney and .melbourne suffixes respectively, which presumably means that some government body will be in charge of allocating their domains. There is potential here for abuse of power and political favouritism. I can foresee a future situation where a local melbourne community group is denied a .melbourne domain because they are judged to be too controversial while other ‘safer’ groups are handed domains without question.

The first window for applications closes in April 2012 and its unclear when further applications will be accepted. Changing things of this scale is rarely a painless exercise and ICANN have predicted a few bumps along the way, however I personally love the idea of typing in more meaningful web addresses and saying good-bye to .com domains.