$234 Million?
Nice racket - $234 Million+ in application fees alone. Nice (non) work if you can get it I suppose. I'm in the wrong business!
Web baron ICANN has braced itself for at least 1,200 applications for new top-level internet domains in the first round of its controversial gTLD expansion programme. CEO Rod Beckstrom said that the organisation's beleaguered TLD Application System (TAS), which is still offline more than two weeks after a data-leaking security …
I'm selling a fart in a jar for $180K. It might not be as ludicrously hilerious as buying a gTLD for $180K, but at least I'm not asking for $5K to register before I fill a jar for you.
Both products stink, are a load of hot air, and a waste of breath.
ICANN has gone one dot too far! They have done this to line the pockets of their directors, many own or have a stake in a domain registration business. They are not doing this to benefit the Internet, they're simply abusing their position and cashing in. :-(
Not in the slightest. Everything to do with gTLDs is purely a stupidity tax. No, the useful services I was thinking of would be whatever they do to maintain the existing TLDs. It probably doesn't require that much money, but as long as someone else is paying I don't really care. Life is too short to worry about whether *everyone* else is getting value for money.
Well that's just great. I knew this was going to be a stupid idea from the start.
.com, .net, .org, .edu, .biz, .co, .xxx, etc are very simple to remember and they aren't really all that obtrusive
but an EXTRA 1,200! of them from .music to .kitchensink seriously, why? It's nothing but a cash grab!
I am not opposed to extending the gTLD pool but not as a vanity exercise, it needs to be carefully thought out to provide the best value to the users of the internet.
The fun part is that it doesn't matter.
Nobody will actually use these gTLDs, and the only people who may be affected are browsers who might get asked to alter the heuristics for the autocomplete.
If they don't bother, no end user will give a damn if they never see a .marketing domain.
The weird part is really that marketers think they are valuable. The most valuable part of a URL is clearly the first few characters, becuase that is what a user types first. If your site comes up top of autocomplete...
There is a whole theory about where is the sweet pricing spot when launching a new product that actually has no competition (like a luxury item). It's just a matter of maximizing profit, not maximizing the number of sales. The cost does not even matter. And you just can not counterfeit their product. So, getting 1200 bids at 180k each is an amazingly good performance.