HACKER Q&A
📣 binarymax

Why is the .IO gTLD uncertainty not getting press here?


There have been a small smattering of posts not making the front page. But the news is a BFD for the community here. As I write this there is yet another startup launching with an IO domain on the front page.

We need to be aware of this issue as a community and potentially petition ICANN to find a way to keep the IO domain alive.


  👤 dmart Accepted Answer ✓
I fully expect that an exception will be made to effectively treat it as a tech-related gTLD, which is how it has been used in practice all along anyway.

If ICANN really chooses to break every GitHub Pages, crates.io, gcr.io, quay.io, etc. URL just to blindly follow a policy, then they will have proven themselves an incompetent arbiter of the domain name system. This feels so unlikely that I'm not worried about it all.


👤 nullindividual
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526 - which made the front page

👤 JohnFen
I suspect that this isn't a big deal for those who don't hold .io domains.

👤 codingdave
Yes, we do need to be aware of it and deal with it. But part of that awareness is building resilience into your company's brand. As in, have a brand identity separate from a specific domain name. That may sound crazy when so many tech companies do/did tie their brand to their domain, but they are not the same thing.

👤 faizmokh
There was a trending post few days ago on front page. I definitely read too many comments supporting colonialism just to justify continued use of .io domain.

👤 throw49sjwo1
> We need to be aware of this issue as a community and potentially petition ICANN to find a way to keep the IO domain alive.

No, we need to migrate off ccTLD.


👤 LinuxBender
I can not speak for anyone else just me personally. Had I owned any .io domains that were being used for email or websites I would start redirecting to any of my other domains and put an inline easy to read but attention getting banner at the top of the page that said something like, "Redirected from old domain to new domain be sure to bookmark" and I would link that to a news page explaining why I was taking that precaution and I would email my customers and communities with a short but sweet easy to read email explaining the same thing and would credit customers for their trouble so there is something in it for them.

If it turned out to be a nothing-burger then I would use that .io for a blog page related to the community or something else non business or revenue critical and have links back to the new domain. I would keep the commercial content on the .com, the community forums on .net and philanthropic type content on .org or .io. i.e. news about donations to funding a new no-kill animal shelter and such


👤 pestatije
BFD - Big Fucking Deal

not that i agree, but obscure acronyms are a PITA