I’m deadpooling this .ECO top level domain right now. Not because it’s global warming/eco related, there’s plenty of money being thrown around to support just about every crazy green idea out there. I just don’t think the world needs another top level domain, and certainly not one that is designed for “individuals to express their support for environmental causes, for companies to promote their environmental initiatives, and for environmental organizations to maintain their websites.”
People like .COM domains, or alternatively country level domains. These other ones are little more than traps to force brands to protect their trademarks during expensive pre-sale periods. The company behind the domain gets the most of the money, and ICANN, the quasi-governmental, quasi-mafia organization that oversees this mess gets their cut as well. The more domain names that get registered, the more money ICANN makes, which lets them hire more staff to stick their noses into more things. Meanwhile, they’re making a mess of the Internet.
Al Gore is partnering with the company to help secure ICANN approval and then promote the domain. Which goes without saying. Fred Kreuger, previously the founder of Tagworld (now Social Project), is one of the founders.
I’m pretty sick & tired of these new domain name extensions.
I don’t ever recall visiting a website on the .tel, .mobi, .biz, etc. domain and can’t name a SINGLE significant brand, company, blog or community that uses one of those as their primary website.
Exaclty. I hit the occasional .tv for a video service. Any other site I assume to be spam and move on before I get there.
.tv is not a gTLD.
Did he ever say it was?
These day’s I am not typing domain name, i use googling or delicious bookmark
only thing im interested is content
I agree with Matt on this one, the world doesn’t need yet another pointless TLD.
What benefit will it do? They don’t need .eco on the end to tell everyone their website is about tree-hugging…(controversial comment I know and I’ll probably be crucified for saying it) but really, I think the powers that be are getting carried away here. Whats wrong with sticking to a good old .com or ccTLD?
Message to Al Gore, ICANN and friends…If you want to be eco-friendly, don’t waste money on this, sponsor something that will actually benefit the world and go plant some trees or something, don’t dilute the domain name industry yet again!
They should launch the extension .crap for all the rubbish ideas people have.
Thumbs down all round on this one.
I’m liking the .crap comment! What else should fall under that category? Spam! How useful that could be!
Over planting some trees, I’d tell them to stop pushing the Green Agenda…
“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
- Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank
consultants to the United Nations
Why is global warming such a huge deal for these people? Millions of people are dying from global hunger, and they’re concerned about polar bears and melting ice caps. Give me a break. All these greenies need to re-focus their energy into helping people, not trees.
People just block other domains to avoid misuse…
long live .com and .org!
.eco.useless
What else is there to say other than this is one stupid idea.
I’m in agreement. Enough already with all the new top level domains.. waste of time and effort that could be used elsewhere.
Yes, but such a great marketing idea. Hey, come to my green .eco site and buy a bunch of hemp t-shirts.
is there a .ear for earth that can default,
then there can be optional .mar, .moo and .sun
lol
may soon happen!
why did you say that! they will read your comment!
Seriously, this is bs… I wonder if those rich guys that bought the .com domains and held on it are now crying as more domain extensions get rolled out….
with .etc soon to follow lol
soon its gonna be .something.something.something
I am hoping .moo would be for social network for cows instead of for moon. I have billion dollar idea in that domain, anyone want to sponsor it?
This is a scam. Promoted by Al Gore or not.
If somebody could popularize new DNS root servers, they would be instant billionaires.
There’s nothing stopping somebody from creating a new DNS system with a firefox plug in and giving Google.com proper to the highest bidder.
The internet isn’t locked like that.
I’m sorry, an FF extension alone wouldn’t do the trick. You would have to eventually create a hack for TCP/IP and gethostbyname(). You could start with a FF plugin. Then you could sell out CA certificates on your new name auth system as well. $$$
Think outside the taco.
but chances are these big companies would have know the rolling out of the extensions before hand and would have bought it to prevent this type of bs…
Haven’t you guys heard of .web and new.net?
They has been so many times in the 15 years, I guess you all just have used the Internet for past 3 years and don’t have a clue
I thought the readers on TC were smart, educated and did research before posting.
You’re so superior to us all.
*yawn*
But anways… yes, alternic did this quite a while ago, but no one used them outside of small tech circles, just like no one bothers with new.net.
When I worked at an ISP, we banded together with other ISPs to create our own TLDs like .bar .baz. .foo .f**k, etc. As long as you were using one of our DNS servers, it would resolve
I’m a .com purist though.
Ah, you hacked DHCP for your customers, NICE.
Roadrunner does that too.
But they don’t take it to the next level.
The early players got all the riches. Even CAs like Thawte which was in Africa.
The series of tubes (al gore) that runs the internet can just as well be rerouted on the switchboard level with some effort to give some new players some of the money.
What they sell costs absolutely nothing to make and almost nothing to maintain.
I mean we, newer, smaller companies should band together on a new NS system and hack the wealth from that for ourselves.
We can especially do that with mobile where the browser plays a smaller role and native applications have the limelight.
“series of tubes” was actually Ted Stevens, my bad. Al Gore “created the internet” with a grant.
Correction made.
Starting a new NS system would have an adoption problem, don’t you think?
Here’s an analogy: We have great technology to prevent credit card fraud at POS, but we don’t implement it because a) it is expensive (until it costs more to deploy, they just won’t do it b) getting people to put in new equipment is hard
If there’s a second set of root servers that authoratative name servers query for results, you have to get everyone to implement that. How do you propose doing that?
I mean, we banded together with other ISPs to implement our hack.
Also, you can’t really have two versions of a $domain.com out there. You need to know which one is correct. That sort of confusion wouldn’t be handled by consumers well and that would be the end of that.
We were merely interested in creating vanity TLDs like say… .CYAN
I think people would maybe move away from .com for vanity TLDs. Hell – Cyan.Banister would be pretty bad ass. So, maybe another system for everything but what exists now.
err – one correction. “until it costs more than fraud to deploy – they just won’t do it” lost that in my edit.
“Also, you can’t really have two versions of a $domain.com out there. You need to know which one is correct. That sort of confusion wouldn’t be handled by consumers well and that would be the end of that.”
Why would you have to adhere to any existing TLD specification, RFC or otherwise???
Why not just sell Google, or Live, or Pizza ???
Everybody that does software development knows “localhost” or adds single TLD host names for vhosts they have on their local copy of apache right?
Why would you have to assign .sucker TLDs at all?
The existing ones could be reserved in this system, but everything else would be fair game, and these would be MUCH more valuable than the .coms
Because now instead of dsfkllfksdldfjks.com you have dsfkllfksdldfjks and that’s just so much easier for “regular people”
LOLZ, so adoption.
You form some kind of RIAA to do this and the auth product sales surrounding it, and bam.
People will be like “OMG, no more .net, .com, .annoying”
It’s not like we’re implementing a new system. It would be using the existing system with bind, zones, cnames, ect…, except that non-resolvable TLDs route to “the new root servers” automatically through a modified DHCP.
If you were an ISP and banded with other ISPs it would be even better, because then you wouldn’t have to buy out some firefox extension and have people call you a phisher even if you’re not, and you’re trying to push your standard virally.
If Roadrunner and a couple other ISPs started running this NS hack on their DHCP instead of running adverts for non-resolvable hosts, they could make a fortune selling that as a service the way ICANN does.
I don’t think it would get a negative reaction. I think people would think it’s cool.
Why are we slaves to a few organizations and CAs?
This is the internet, we should be writing our own rules.
We’re on the same page in that case then. I’ve wanted to be able to register TLDs for a long time and there’s a way we can do this, you are absolutely right. You sound passionate about it — you should make it happen.
Ideas are only ideas until someone jumps off the trapeze and decides to jump and that’s when the fun stuff takes place, including falling
I’m not a fan of the plugin approach, I think working with major ISPs on this and making them all resellers/registrars might be the answer.
Good job & good luck Clark, Jothan.
Cheers
Sahar Sarid
Bido.com – Social Auctions
Bido sucks.
Your mom does.
No, Bido really does suck.
So make *another* one to make them buy and buy again in an infinite loop until you own all their companies.
Eventually they will give up and the free nature of the internet will rule.
I would suggest buying out Ad blocker pro which already has tens of millions of downloads and installs then bundling your “new root servers” which would be an upgrade to a popular extension which you bought out, to route address bar hosts to your master root server lists. LOL.
Once you have that done, then you work your way out and find a way to drive your lists into the default TCP/IP stacks in the OSes.
Master plan++
From then on you market certificates and digital authentication products until you are literally richer than Bill Gates.
OK, my turn is over. Next. I gotta get to bed some time.
My comment was in response to Shawzi who wrote:
“but chances are these big companies would have know the rolling out of the extensions before hand and would have bought it to prevent this type of bs…”
.com domains .. or commercial right?
I think it’s a good idea. I normally would agree with all the naysayers, but in this case… I like it!
Yeah agree with you Mike – just not sure this solves a problem and is merely a commercial play.
Why does nike.com need nike.eco ? Seems they could easily promote their initiatives on their own site through UI design more effectively than having to purchase an entirely new sTLD for the purposes of promoting their ‘green’ projects.
New sTLDs in my opinion just lead to more consumer confusion. i.e. the *.mobi extension is hardly ever used for mobiles. Companies purchase these sTLD’s for fear of infringement on brand reputation but never use them – always reverting back to a subdomain extension of their TLD – i.e. m.facebook.com and so forth.
ICANN continues to approve these domains as a viable revenue stream, and proponents of new sTLDs present good business cases as to why the “world” needs them when infact they don’t.
Penetration into the wider market of these extensions is just too long, too hard and too costly to make them effective.
Do more green initiatives – definitively – but promote them on your core site, not on some newly introduced sTLD.
If you think about it… it really could go on forever. They grow their own money trees with TLD’s.
.pic for photo
.vid for video
.twt for microblogging
.soc for social network
.her for women related
.him for dude related
.tec for technology
.gam for gambling sites (or .lose)
.fin for financial
and so on… forever.
On the other hand, would it give the little guys a better chance to get a short domain name? Usable .com names are a thing of the past for anyone but deep pocketed companies. The only fix would be to outlaw anything other than a first come first served release of a new TLD.
Never gonna happen…
FAIL,
they missed that “eco” is a prefix.
“eco” looks better as a subdomain.
products.eco
eco.products.com
Totally agree.
The might be doing it to gradually move into the situation where you can register ( for a fee of course ) .coke .microsoft etc etc etc
That would be a massive cash bonanza for all involved. I believe cities .yourcity is already on the icann approval horizon
This will crash the value of existing .com’s as people start going to sites like archives.techcrunch rather than techcrunch.com/archives
On snail mail addresses you don’t put the organisation type (.com , .net , .org , .eco ) etc so why should you online?
Is there a way to do away with the whole constraint of domain names altogether? Right now when you start a new enterprise it’s virtually impossible to come up with a domain name that makes any sense, especially if you want a .com. So you either name your company something ridiculous like zapwhipple (probably taken) or get a domain like http://www.joet...aincampaign.com. Or you pay through the nose like Toys R Us who just bought toys.com for $5.1 million.
It’s gotten to the point where the first movers have an unfair advantage and it’s a barrier to entry for new companies. Or, are all these people paying big money for domains wasting their money because the actual domain name is becoming less relevant? It’s becoming more rare that we actually have to type a domain name into an address bar, or remember one. Either we click on a link in google or some other web page or we start typing the company name in our awesome bar and the url pops up. Now we can even take a picture of a 2d bar code with our mobile and the site will come up. Do we really need domain names at all? Why couldn’t the address behind a link or 2d bar code simply be an IP address? Or, is there some other cleaver solution that someone will come up with to break the monopoly of those who own the limited number of .com names that make any sense?
.algore would’ve been much better
I agree.
eff.algore.com
fear.uncertainty.doubt.al.gore.com.eco
al.gore.man.bear.pig
albus.dumble.gore
Man-made global warming is a hoax. It’s only a matter of time before the lemmings can no longer deny it.
Next: .chickenlittle and .fad TLDs
The only website suffix’s i take seriously are .. .com .net .org .tv.
Apparently, mankind now has officially gone nuts. What about a new .mbp TLD to raise ManBearPig awareness?
Mike, I know this isn’t your first post since your return, but this one in particular reminded me of why I love your writing. No-one else can do snarky quite as well as you. Great to have you back!
it allows, among other possible things, sites to specialize themselves in an specific content, meaning that users certainly will know what they are going to find in a site….i think its a good thing
I have a premium .INFO, it rarely gets any visits. So this new .ECO is useless. Just another milking cow.
Agreed that .COM is definitely the way to go.
For what it’s worth, however, it appears that the .TRAVEL top-level-domain (TLD) is starting to gain some traction in the travel/tourism space.
Dave Politis
c/o Politis Communications
“Maximizing corporate value
thru strategic communications”
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We already have a TLD for “eco” nonprofits: .org
If you’re a commercial “eco” company, good news, we have a TLD perfectly suited for you as well: .com
fyi,
http://www.eco.ORG was sold at auction last summer through Sedo.
Ok, so this article would be broadly correct if it had been written a few years ago. These days, enough legislation has occurred that companies no longer feel forced to take up new TLDs just because they exist. Instead they seem happy to go through the UDRP if there is a problem down the line.
Bottom line is that TLDs forcing sunrise payments from companies is not something that happens at a significant level and certainly doesn’t warrant the hassle and expense of setting up a TLD.
Also, all the people who are pissed off with .net and .biz are really going to hate the next few years. ICANN is liberalising the whole market and over the next few years there will potentially be thousands of new TLDs. When that happens look to new and different business models emerging and our concept of .com or nothing changing.
ICANN is indeed opening up creation of new gTLD’s to anyone with the money ($185k application fee) and wherewithal to manage a registry:
http://www.coml...Autumn%2008.pdf
Okay – why control TLDs at all? Why not a universal TLD system where ICANN could control a handful of TLDs and then let any registrar sell what ever TLD you want as long as it’s available.
.google
.treadway
.fluffycarniverousrabbits
Other than the official TLDs already in existence, there’s no reason why open and unrestricted TLDs could not be the next domain play.
Get your TLD here for $9.95 per year and go to town!
.com rules!
dot coms all the way, especially the premium ones. I find you can still get good deals if you look. For example only 30mins left in the auction for “www.deposits.com” at only 15k.
.Eco just seems dumb, hey theres a good one .dumb!
Welcome back Mike! Great post, TC has been lacking in actual IT related posts, and you NAILED IT son! ICANN is quasi-suspect all the way baby… But let’s get on to the fact Verisign has plans on raising the .COM price once again! These so called non profits must die.
is that a news. Why should we have so many domain extensions? Is there a need for this.
Well, Al Gore invented the Internet so he can do whatever he wants. I think he should concentrate his efforts on reducing carbon footprint of the Internet – the number of servers supporting all sorts of nonsense like .eco, and spams. If he succeeded in that, it would be a success itself.
While I agree that .com is here to stay and that there are too many extensions already – I actually like the .eco idea. Cleaver way to create value from nothing.
A percentage of gross sales should be specifically tied to protecting forests and biodiversity projects/protection. And – Yes because its good for all of us…. mostly because we need these resources for discovery (drugs, material sciences, etc) and this would be a great way to help pay for them.
If people want to pay for them, why not.
Why not? Because as of yet, no one has produced a domain name dictionary to aid lemmings in understanding what bias they are paying for, when they race with the crowd.
Even many existing major top level domains are misrepresentative. How about combining .gov, .edu and .eco into ‘.trust-us’? At least then, cogitative people would be fore-warned to understand the dangers of entering therein.
.
I understand your point, but instead of killing an innovative idea to funnel money into a good cause because of trust issues, why things don’t work now and what hasn’t been done…. why not look at this as another potential opportunity?
.eco could create a stamp of approval for all .eco websites. So instead of allowing a huge landrush at $5.95 each, they up the price and provide a monitoring service and seal of approval. Thus, .eco could become a trusted destination…
There are solutions. We just have to create them.
Wow! I’m glad that you persevered and wrote those last thoughts! Suddenly, the benefits of .eco are much clearer to me! Now I can see the opportunities for real change in the world!
Please contact me at Jack@BridgeForSale.Scam, so that we can conspire on how to work this con.
The right side of the dot is extremely valuable. gTLD’s are coming because there’s a shit load of money to be made with them.
Dislike confusion? Thank capitalism.
I was befuddled why Mike (& everybody else) seems cares so much about this. I guess that as an owner of an internet brand like TC puts Mike into a justifiable opinion of hating all of these TLDs; speaking as a lowly pleb I can’t really care too much however.
Seems like the same argument could be used for anything outside of the realm of county-level-domains, .com, and .org, are making “a mess of the internet”. But isn’t the internet meant to be messy?
Regardless, given the number of identical names in the world, I think an explosion in TLDs is inevitable as the acquisition of personalized domain-names becomes more and more mainstreamed.
Anyone who likes .com domains has never tried registering a domain, at least in the last couple of years. It’s absolutely ridiculous how many domain parkers are out there. I welcome gTLDs if they vow to block domain parking.
ill buy the solar.eco and point it over to solarfeeds.com, but besides that its a schwag idea….
Great idea and great marketing tool for green companies. When I was young my father leased a street outside his office and changed it to his last name. It was only for a year but it created a sense of importance that his patients took comfort in and it was a great marketing tool when giving people directions. If you can elevate yourself in any way that your customer perceives to be valuable it’s a win. .eco is just another opportunity to do so. Good luck!
My dog just pooped.
FYI : My dog just pooped
Now .eco? I have so many domain names already. It has become a mortgage payment each time a renewal comes to email box lol. The market has been pretty mucky lately. Oh well, lets see who buys hybrid.eco first. We all know it will be Gore, Kevin Ham or Ford.
Well what do you know ! It pooped again !!!
You have so many domain names ? Wow !
Will you marry me ?
Seriously
New top level domains are useless. Remember .mobi anyone?
We don’t need one or two new TLDs – we need several thousand. This is the only way to get past the trademark madness and artificial shortage of strings that has put so much power and money into such a small number of hands. So, .eco – why not? Bring it on, and the rest – it will be better for everyone.
We don’t need domain names anymore and we certainly don’t need a system that is dictatered.
mike, I am surprised to hear you say that.
when (not if) the first one or two large companies start using their own name to manage their namespace things will change VERY quickly. a single .ibm and things will be very different.
I kinda like it, actually.