ICANN plan for new TLDs

Currently, there are 16 Top Level Domains (TLDs) including the well-known .com, .net, .edu and .org and the not-so-well known .cat, .coop, .jobs and .mobi. However, the body responsible for coordinating the internet’s address system – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – plans to radically change that this year by creating between 200 and 800 new TLDs. What’ll this mean? Basically, that companies and organizations will be able to register their brand name as a domain – in other words, walmart.com could become shop.walmart or allspammedup.com could become blog.allspammedup.

ICANN’s plans are not without support. “It offers the fastest and cheapest mechanism to create a new layer of cyber-brand with global visibility,” claims Naseem Javed of the E-Commerce Times. But the scheme has also been widely criticised, and for very good reasons. The first problem with ICANN’s plan relates to ease-of-use. The current system, while cetainly not perfect, is nonetheless predictable and, even if we don’t know a company’s web address, we can usually work it out (for example, it’s safe to assume that eBay’s address in ebay.com). But what’ll it be under the new systems? Shop.ebay? Ebay.ebay? Or still ebay.com (should they not be prepared to spend on a personalized domain)? In short, it’s not going to be as easy to find websites. This isn’t a major problem, I suppose – it will simply mean that we’ll need to make more extensive use of search engines. Still, it will certainly be less convenient than at present.

The second problem is that companies have already made a considerable investments in the current domain name system. Websites are designed around .com and restructuring would be a major exercise (antiques.shop.ebay.com may have to become shop.antiques.ebay). This is one of the reasons that so many companies have objected to the new plan rather than seeing it as means of creating “a new layer of cyber-brand with global visibility.”

The third problem relates to security. To protect their fat-fingering customers, companies have bought up similar names – for example, gooogle.com redirects to google.com and eebay.com redirects to ebay.com. But those companies will find this a much more expensive option as ICANN have estimated the cost of a new TLD shall be $185,000 plus a $75,000 registry fee. The substantial costs involved should be enough to deter miscreants and wrongdoers, but can companies count on that? ICANN also plan to introduce verification processes to ensure that companies can only register domains to which they have a valid claim. But can companies really take comfort from this? ICANN and their registrars’ record in this area has certainly been less than perfect.

Compounding the security problem is the fact that there would be considerable confusion among users. Currently, people know that ebay.com belongs to eBay and so are (usually) able to steer clear of spamvertized phishing sites with some other address. But that accumulated knowledge will count for nothing when the system changes. People will not know whether the real address is still antiques.shop.ebay.com or whether it’s become shop.ebay.antiques, antiques.shop.ebay or antiques.ebay.shop. Sure, savvy users will be able to work out what’s what easy enough, but there are plenty of users out there who do not fall into that category (and here’s some proof of that!).

Some people may like the idea of a domain-name marketplace and the branding opportunities which it will afford (especially ICANN which could net $148 million from the sale of the 800 new domains); but many others see it as unnecessary tinkering with a system which, though not perfect, is far from being broken.