New Top-Level Domains

[chrisacky]

22+ of the approved domains from the list of 30 are all signed to a a single startup[0] called Donuts[1]. ( http://www.donuts.co/ )

Apparently they raised $100M[2] back in 2012.

They have since agreed to distribute these domains through 19 registrars[3] (eNom, Name.com etc)...

Looking at their ICANN PIC submission[4] they have registered no fewer than 200-250 LLCs

[0] : https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...

[1] : http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts

[2] : http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-fu...

[3] : http://www.donuts.co/news/donuts-adds-another-seven-generic-...

[4] : https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...

[pkfrank]

http://www.donuts.co/about/team/

Do a ctrl+f for "ICANN" and you'll see how well-networked the Donuts.co team is. Can't be sure if this is true cronyism, or whether they just really know how to play the game. Not sure it's terribly different either way.

--Edit--

per chrisacky's link above (http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-fu...), it looks like Donuts.co submitted 307 applications at $185k/per, for a total of $56.8 million. That's a hell of a way to earn favors with ICANN while ostensibly just trying to get more picks.

[ukandy]

".WINE is perfect for a winery!"

What are these guys drinking? I'll give it a miss.

[dsl]

You can see what a huge scam and insider money play this was by just looking at the names of the companies that got these TLDs.

[archQuestions]

If you're looking for a more open source approach to domain names, check out http://namecoin.info and http://dot-bit.org

[AJ007]

The thing that sticks out most to me is how poor these extensions are from a marketing & naming standpoint.

[jamessun]

Agreed. I suspect that many of these LLCs can be traced back to a handful of large companies.

[scott_karana]

In the short term, I'm not too worried: consumers not wanting to enter long/weird domains will probably cause most of these to fade into obscurity.

On the other hand: is ICANN completely broken? This could have more serious ramifications down the road...

[0x0]

I think it's super suspect that ICANN, a non-profit organization with a purpose to maintain "the stable and secure operation" of the Internet (as described by Wikipedia), can allow this to happen.

Do these additional generic top-level domains bring any benefits - beyond being a license to print money for the tld sponsor&registrars?

[joshmlewis]

It's interesting to see a lot of the domain endings are longer than the standard domains today. It'll be interesting to see what they do with them. Some of the choices seem a little odd considering the price to pay, such as .bike, .guru, or .tips.

I don't like that people (with money) will start buying up these generic top level domains and have complete control over who uses them. I would rather see a non-profit registrar of sorts but I know that would probably never happen.

[yeldarb]

I could see .tips and .gugu could making some sense. eg iphone.tips, php.guru, etc. But .bike is definitely weird.

[yeldarb]

Really hoping nobody registers ".js" -- would wreak havoc on searches for a lot of common Javascript libraries like "underscore.js"

Similarly I could see someone registering the ".html" or ".php" tld and causing some huge issues.

Although I must admit, owning the domain "index.html" would endow huge nerd cred.

[binarymax]

Two letter gtlds are reserved for countries only.

[Kudos]

Google has applied for .zip

[yeldarb]

Do we know yet how browsers will be treating these tlds? Eg if I type "diamonds" into the Chrome omnibar will it take me to a Google search for "diamonds" or to http://diamonds

[dsl]

ICANN made a decision late in the game to not allow "dotless" domains, i.e. making "diamonds" resolve to something the TLD owner decides.

This crushed the business model of most of the new TLD operators, so don't expect them to be around in a few years.

[0x0]

Interesting that the fully-qualified (with a dot suffix) URL http://nic.diamonds./ brings up a 404...

[perlpimp]

Well, I wonder how that affects mobile. Since there is a move to mobile app topology of information consumption, wonder if domain names will still be relevant 5 years from now.

On the same note why TLDs, not just have a 'name registry'. Seems like technical dictates what is not natural. Why I can't have website name for example "burger" or "pizza" I get that there are designations and control entities. But isn't it a bit contrived? I am not against dot notation but whole synthetic user facing naming system...

[hayksaakian]

you CAN technically do that in this way

if you buy .pizza you could technically host one website at

http://www.pizza

[harvestmoon]

We don't need 50 crappy new domain extensions. We just need one new one that works well like .com.

Personally, I had high hopes for .co, but it doesn't seem too well adopted yet.

[amybe]

It's definitely getting there. It seems .io is where it's at, though, despite the price.

[gesman]

Why waste time with useless and long TLD's and not introduce a single-letter TLD's, such as .a .b .c ...etc ?

Or .js - to make Silicon Valley go orgasmic?

[ivthreadp110]

Look at the trends- It's very funny-- the language generator... Almost all these domains are owned by one entity.

[earlz]

These domains appear to be going for $30/year, at least the ones operated by Donuts (ie, most). See http://www.101domain.com/domain-availability-search.htm and then search for foobar.bike

[lelandbatey]

Looking at this, I see the reference to a couple of different dates. There's the "Sunrise Open" and the "Sunrise Close" dates, then there's the "General Availability" date. What does each mean?

[tombrossman]

Gandi does a pretty good job explaining this [1] as a 'trademark brand protection phase'. Basically, if you have a registered trademark and want to defend it from others registering <YourTrademark>.<NewTLD> your opportunity to do so is during this phase. The rest of us commoners get to by the leftovers starting on the General Availibility date.

[1] http://www.gandibar.net/post/2013/10/29/The-launch-of-the-ne...

[jotm]

Oh. no - not language specific TLDs! They wanted to introduce them like 7 years ago, and a lot of people agreed that it would just be a detriment to the Internet as we know it (freely accessible and global).

[perlgeek]

Don't you think that .com and .info and .biz etc. already are language specific? They are just specific to the/a language you happen to speak.

[tcdent]

How does recognizing global languages as "first class citizens" make the internet less global?

[talles]

I love the .today domain.

Anyone knows which registrars are supporting these new domains?

[dcubek]

http://www.donuts.co/ is running it. Most of these have nic.gtld up and running. nic.tattoo is my favourite so far.

[kyriakos]

I am with the impression that they wont be made available to the public - or at least not for a flat fee.

[eli]

Gandi has some listed on the site available for pre-order, but I don't see .today

https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/info

[adamb0mb1]

Check out: http://vps1.dnts.net/tlds/ -- this is the timing on most of the domains.

[emehrkay]

.guru seems like a good one with tons of app/saas appeal

[scottshea]

I am sure someone proposed the .meow or .cat domains. I just wonder how far they got

[benjiweber]

.cat already exists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat

[gesman]

Can we have this TLD:

.yetanotherkindausefulbutmaybenottld ? :)

[fakename]

still holding out for clownpenis.fart

[amerika_blog]

Might as well just start using freetext at this point. Register your search term with Google, then forget about it.

[yogo]

Sounds like the AOL keyword days. :)