Who Will Really Benefit By Generic TLD’s?

telecommatt | June 27, 2008

I admit that I’m a bit pessimistic about this. I’m not seeing how it helps the grow of the internet to suddenly be able to have a website at www.yoursite.coke. Especially with the cost of registering such a TLD in the 6 figures, who is this going to benefit other than large multinationals and domain squatters?

Now that the internet is so intertwined with what we do, there’s got to be tons of things that will be affected by the introduction of these new TLDs (not to mention domains in cyrillic script) that we take for granted today. What do you think? Will this make the world wide web a better place?

clipped from www.computerworld.com

ICANN votes to expand top-level domain names

Generic TLDs could appear by the end of 2009; registrars divided over merits

“The introduction of new TLDs will provide more choices, but it is yet to be seen if these choices will provide domain names our customers will want,” said Steven Vine, deputy general counsel at Register.com, in an e-mail. “Additionally, the rules for these TLDs are yet to be finalized, and there are risks that if the right framework is not developed, we may see a repeat of mistakes of the past. For example, as we have learned, in order to maintain a competitive marketplace, we must prevent unfair advantages among registrars.”