HACKER Q&A
📣 erdaniels

Are the new TLDs bad for business?


I’ve noticed an increasing amount of generic TLDs being created. There are generic ones owned by obscure companies like .band and then others like .beauty owned by L’Oréal. In the former case, this feels like squatting and in the latter, monopolization on a whole namespace. In either case, it takes an exorbitant amount of money for the average person or company to get a generic TLD. What are people’a thoughts on the process for getting a TLD when it comes to pricing and the rules? Personally, I’m worried that we will have a polluted namespace with confusion about the legitimacy of certain TLDs.

Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

  👤 newscracker Accepted Answer ✓
Here's my personal, not so useful take on this. At some point, there will be some confusion with so many TLDs and names (if it's not there already). This is why it's more important to worry about your brand name being unique or recognizable first and then worry about which TLDs to use. Marketing should take care of surfacing your domain.TLD in searches and social media.

If you don't have a business with profit in hundreds of millions of dollars a year (or revenues in billions of dollars a year with no profit), then you should just go with whatever domain and TLD you get, preferring the originals, like .com and .net, then preferring any ccTLDs, and then preferring other TLDs. I don't think many common people recognize and understand that something like .google or .amazon is really a website address. Don't worry about the TLDs that you cannot get because of the price or because it's being squatted.

If you do have a business with profit in hundreds of millions of dollars a year (or revenues in billions of dollars a year with no profit), spend a low fraction of a digit percent of it on brand management by engaging a company that can help you figure out the right mix of domain name, brand value, which squatted domain to buy, how to buy it for cheaper, etc.