In business and in politics, it seems the obvious explanations are often overlooked by journalists, either from naivete or - more likely I think - from a deliberate effort to keep the story going.
Such is the case, I think, with the plans announced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN - that's mumbo-jumbo for the outfit that controls the naming of internet domains, websites, and such) to greatly expand the number and type of available "top-level domains". More explanation: TLDs are the three letters after the dot, as in ".com" or ".edu", sometimes also referred to as "suffixes" (but not simply as "domains" as the writer mistakenly claims).
Our intrepid reporter here duly quotes ICANN to the effect that the expansion will "promote innovation," as well as critics of the move who claim that it will more likely promote confusion. So, like big oil companies which publicly scoff at profit and promote themselves as creators of jobs and friends of the environment, ICANN is just looking to serve the public interest. I think critics have the better argument.
It's true that ICANN is nominally a non-profit organization. But its livelihood clearly depends upon the companies that sell and register website names, and increasingly offer hosting and site-creation services as well. There used to be only a couple of such authorized registrars; now there are dozens. And now that every company and entity in the world already has a website, demand for names is probably down.
How could business be pumped up? Well, it's been pointed out that many existing companies may very well want to buy up alternate versions of their name (for example, WidgetCo might have Widgetco.com, but might want to block others from creating similar-sounding websites like Widgetco.usa or Widgetco.edu). That's particularly true for the planned ".xxx" suffix, which would denote pornography and the like. There's already evidence that these .xxx suffixes are being preemptively snapped up. That's lots of dollars headed into the coffers for website names that will forever remain blank.
Following the money gives a strong hint that the main effort is to create an artificial demand. Why expand the available suffixes so dramatically when there is no visible surge of interest in them? Apparently,"because ICANN." It's business as usual.
I'm not certain of this, but I think Google and other search engines give priority in their rankings to established suffixes like ".com" and ".edu" versus ".net" or ".me" So folks who buy those domains may be getting the URL name they want, but a suffix that may not make it to page one.
Posted by: Mark Delman | December 22, 2011 at 08:42 AM