.com domains are ending: now the question is who will manage the .web domains, their successors

Think about a website. You will probably end up with .com, by far the most popular domain ending. It is estimated that around 160 million websites around the world are operating under such termination.10 times more than the second and third most popular, i.e. .de (associated with Germany) and .net, from the original ones, as well as .com.

However, if you now try to register a new domain for any company or project on the Internet, you will find that it is almost impossible to find a short and meaningful domain that ends in .com.

None of them have even come close to becoming a new standard like .com, but there is a proposal for a new domain that is making everyone’s teeth pop. This is the .web ending.

Of course, the process of making it available started in 2016, and since then it has remained the subject of contentious allegations between the largest companies in the domain market. Nobody wants to be left without what could be new golden goose domains.

Nut Do Co. officially took over the rights to operate the .web domains. record $135 millionbut some of its competitors pointed out that there is a catch here.

Specifically, Nut Do Co was revealed to be a shell company set up by Verisign, a tech giant that operates .com or .net domains to maintain its hegemony in the sector.

Verisign herself later secretly admitted their relationship. and while ICANN, the body responsible for global domain management, initially concluded that the operation did not violate any rules, one of the giant’s main competitors, Altanovo (formerly known as Afilias), continues to claim that the process was not valid. .

“We really had very high expectations from .web. because they were seen as the first ending that, due to its brevity and specificity, could become the successor to the crowded .com domain. That means a lot of business, and that’s led to this whole soap opera about only advance bookings being allowed today, but we still don’t know the price, or even if it’s possible to turn things around again,” he explains. Mark Gelabert, CEO of INWX.es domain registrarwhere they started accepting pre-bookings with .web.

Many failed successors to the .com domain

ICANN is a non-profit organization that manages the distribution of domains around the world. Its managers are the ones who approve the various proposals that are about to come out and organize their auctions.

It cannot be said that they did not reveal their views. They’ve spent years looking for a formula to make sure that the lack of free .com domains doesn’t become a problem. From the early 2000s to 2016 approved new domain endingssome better known as .shop, .pro or .info and others less like .wyz or even .abogado.

“.com domains on a technical level don’t offer sales on the other end. You didn’t show up on Google or anything like that before, but they’ve become the most recognizable. So much so that any serious brand or project that doesn’t get a .com domain could consider a name change before it’s even born,” says Gelabert.

The hegemony of .com is easy to explain. In 1985, before the Internet was in its infancy, Jon Postel, a professor at the University of Southern California and one of the creators of the modern Internet domain infrastructure, agreed with a handful of colleagues to create the first domain endings.

There were 6 of them: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov and .mil. The .com extensions were intended for commercial websites, but they eventually became the most popular, assimilating “communication” in those early years and leaving others like .org for organizations and .edu and .gov for educational institutions. and governments.

Soon after, geo-level domains such as .us, .es, .de, or .mx associated with countries will begin to be created (although not always, as we explain here).

And, finally, new generic domain endings appeared, which significantly expanded the range. “The process of registering new terminations is tedious, but ICANN is making it possible for anyone to propose such a termination. At the next stage, bail is already requested and obstacles are put up. In the end, at the auction, companies and organizations make bets on who will manage this termination, which is then sold directly to the public by registrar companies, ”says the expert.

.web promises to be a sensation and has raised the dust

Everything that has surrounded .web since it started being talked about has been surrounded by anticipation. The auction proceeds also set a major record for ICANN itself.

That 135 million paid three times the highest bid and was seven times the average price for top-level domains. The latest record was set by the .shop extension when, in January 2016, the Japanese company GMO Registry paid $41.5 million for this perfect completion for an e-commerce business.

Initially, ICANN decided that:

…He [acuerdo de Nu Dot Co y Verisign] it falls into a gray area that is not specifically addressed in the Auction Rules and Guidelines. Thus, while both sides make plausible arguments, neither of those arguments fits the bill. [acuerdo] and conduct of the parties in accordance with the applicable Bidding Rules and Guidelines.

Today’s domain name industry is a legacy of policy decisions made by the Bill Clinton administration in the late 1990s when they sought to develop the foundations of the Internet, then very weak, and ICANN was created as an independent organization.

The aim was to allow young and promising technologies to flourish, free from regulation that could discourage innovation and investment, and to make them accessible to all.

However, over the years, a few controversies and constant price increases in some domains, as well as ICANN’s prolificness when it comes to launching new terminations (estimated to be over 1,500), whose records are always kept in canon, have also been part of the norm.

Will there come a time when .web domains co-exist with .com? Will this help prevent some domains from skyrocketing in price? This Internet story has yet to be told.