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by Scott Frangos

Run for the hills. ICANN, the non-profit Domain Name regulating body formed in ‘98, has announced (see story here) an application process for new domain names, where you can replace the common names following the “Dot” (.com, .net, .org, .biz) with anything you want… for a price. The agency expects the first new domains to appear in early 2009, and speculation puts their price at $50,000 or so (the price has not been set). On second thought, maybe just sit back and enjoy another latte, and let others run for the hills.

I don’t know about you, but if I can’t find YOURCOMPANY.com on the first typing, I am not going to sit there and try several different extensions to see if I can locate it.

Unlimited new domain names? First take: wow. Second take: who cares? For example, I didn’t even know that Los Angeles has already been working with a “.la” extension for some time until researching this article — and I plan to promptly forget it. Do promoters really think I’m going to remember and figure out city name extensions for hundreds of locations in the world? C’mon. And if your city lays out big taxpayer cash to buy such an extension… well, you know what they say about “fools and their money.”

I know, a lot is being made of this potential explosion in domain extensions, but let’s take a deep breath and consider these points:

• The current perceived value in a name is not so much in what follows the “Dot”, but that which preceeds it
• There is an entrenched mindset that commercial companies will use “.com” as their extension
• When “.ws” (WorldSite) was introduced with a big bang, it turned out to be a big fizzle
• Search engines help people locate companies and sites with no awareness needed for the domain extension
• A new extension, take “.destination”, for example will require a huge amount of money, promotion, and acceptance to be of any consequence

What about new domain name extensions for resellers? Is that a big deal? Yes, and no. Think again about potential visitors and customers, which is what this is all about — right? I don’t know about you, but if I can’t find YOURCOMPANY.com on the first typing, I am not going to sit there and try several different extensions to see if I can locate it.

Today, there could be a company listed as YOURCOMPANY.biz — but I don’t try searching for that extension… do you? I head right to a good search engine and track it down that way. The rest is meaningless to me. Maybe, maybe there’s a value in a MacDonald’s getting us to think “hamburgers.macdonalds” — but where’s the beef? I can already find MacDonald’s online and I know what they sell. Hmmm… but this could spell opportunity for a new company that is not well known. Ok… maybe some potential will emerge here for folks with a budget.

But only big companies can afford the $50k to get a specific extension. And, they still have to argue for their right to it before ICANN (expensive when you involve lawyers) and if United Airlines wins the right to put “.united” after their main name over, say, a contender like United Vanlines, then what have they purchased for their labor? What has United Vanlines lost? If I can still go to UnitedVanlines.com like I am conditioned to expect (a major factor), and if I now have to guess who has “.united” after their name, then in my book United Vanlines would come out way ahead. And what about just using Google to find a company?

I think you can see that I don’t really .think, .much, of this new .domain, .availability. What do you think?