How would you like it if all your favorite websites had different top level domain names, that is to say, if instead of www.chase.com you could have www.chase.bank or www.walmart.shop or even top level domains referring to brand names themselves like www.laundry.whirlpool or www.laundry.maytag? You could argue both ways-that it could lead to more creative ways for consumers to remember websites or that it would result in more confusion (I subscribe to the latter view).
Whatever your point of view is, apparently the change is coming (a weak pun intended:)). WSJ has covered the issue here and here is an old article announcing the move. And since it needs a membership to read the whole article, I will take the liberty of providing my interpretation of what it says:
1. Costs for companies to maintain top level domain names will go up. For instance, if you are Apple, what domains do you purchase-.apple .mac .ipod .itunes .iphone? What about .music or .cool or .notebook or even .jobs? What if another company took these domain names?
2. Already companies spend an enormous amount to maintain their web domain names, this move multiplies the costs of doing business.
3. The number of fraudsters might go up. What if I purchase .bank and create a site called jpchase.bank that looks exactly like chase.com and fool people into giving their account details? That again means the monitoring costs just went up.
4. What happens if I buy .life and do a bidding between insurance companies, lifestyle product companies, hospitals and sell it to the highest bidder?
5. Finally, it already takes so much effort for companies to make people remember websites, this will complicate that attempt even further.
On the other side, the justification for the move is that there are just not enough domain names for everyone-instead of exhausting the domain names, opening up the top level domain names provides an almost infinite supply of unique domain names (the names are provided by a non-profit organization remember-they are apparently not trying to make more money out of this though they definitely will).
I personally feel, it is time to make things simpler and not more complicated. We are all so used to .com .edu and other domain names and Google search is the way we find 95% of what we need; so why go through this hassle of multiple top level domains and inflate the costs of companies at a time when they definitely cannot afford any slack?
Whatever your point of view is, apparently the change is coming (a weak pun intended:)). WSJ has covered the issue here and here is an old article announcing the move. And since it needs a membership to read the whole article, I will take the liberty of providing my interpretation of what it says:
1. Costs for companies to maintain top level domain names will go up. For instance, if you are Apple, what domains do you purchase-.apple .mac .ipod .itunes .iphone? What about .music or .cool or .notebook or even .jobs? What if another company took these domain names?
2. Already companies spend an enormous amount to maintain their web domain names, this move multiplies the costs of doing business.
3. The number of fraudsters might go up. What if I purchase .bank and create a site called jpchase.bank that looks exactly like chase.com and fool people into giving their account details? That again means the monitoring costs just went up.
4. What happens if I buy .life and do a bidding between insurance companies, lifestyle product companies, hospitals and sell it to the highest bidder?
5. Finally, it already takes so much effort for companies to make people remember websites, this will complicate that attempt even further.
On the other side, the justification for the move is that there are just not enough domain names for everyone-instead of exhausting the domain names, opening up the top level domain names provides an almost infinite supply of unique domain names (the names are provided by a non-profit organization remember-they are apparently not trying to make more money out of this though they definitely will).
I personally feel, it is time to make things simpler and not more complicated. We are all so used to .com .edu and other domain names and Google search is the way we find 95% of what we need; so why go through this hassle of multiple top level domains and inflate the costs of companies at a time when they definitely cannot afford any slack?
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