Who Will Be The Big Winners and Losers of the New TLDs?

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By , August 26, 2011

This is a repost of a guest editorial I wrote for Domain Name News.

When one looks at the track record of introducing new Top Level Domains it is perplexing to see where all the enthusiasm around unlimited new TLDs comes from. So far every attempt to roll one out owes it’s sustenance to purely defensive registrations (.biz, .info) or else it’s degraded into an utter fracas (.jobs) or just plain flopped (.pro)

The latest TLD that isn’t a country code tarting itself up as a pseudo-generic is probably a good indicator of what to expect going forward: .xxx – reviled by the industry it extorts , err, purports to serve and first new TLD that we are seriously considering making a conscious decision not to “grab our name before somebody else does!”. I’m certain it won’t be the last. I believe one of the first things we will see as all this unfolds is a buyers strike in defensive regs. Once that happens everything will go sideways.

So despite the near frenzied hype around these things, I have already gone on record to predict failure for the vast majority of them.

The forthcoming onslaught of TLDs can be divided into roughly three categories: Read more »

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