I don’t want to come across as a complete technophobe but I was listening to the news last night and they had a relatively large piece on the applications being made for new web addresses to take the place of .com, .co.uk etc.
Am I missing something or is this just a big bag who gives a s##t?

Not taking the place of, in addition to. And it won’t make any difference, other than requiring more keystrokes to write out a web address. They are for sale, and won’t be cheap, it’ll be businesses largely who take advantage.

Its a pretty fundamental change to the way that web addresses were originally designed. But most people want really care I’d of thought.

Its a pretty fundamental change to the way that web addresses were originally designed

I dunno if it is – it depends a bit how they approve them. The suffix is supposed to indicate the type of site it is, e.g.:

.com – company
.co.uk – uk company
.org – charitable orginisation etc etc.

Some of the new suffixes do, just a bit more specifically.

.app? It’s a site for an app.
.sex – well…
.youtube? it’s a youtube video – this is a bit more dubious, as it’s a brand rather than a more general description.

you aren’t interested in a piece of news and therefore believe that no-one gives a damn?

how unbelievably naive!

this is a bit more dubious, as it’s a brand rather than a more general description.

Isn’t that the point? As .Samsung is being claimed by Samsung and Merck is being claimed by… Well, you know what I’m getting at.

The new gTLDs are just another extension of the extortion racket run by ICANN.

The notion that the TLD should represent the content of the site is something from the early 1990s. Do you buy your bikes from bikes.com or your cars from cars.com? Of course not.In the real world, TLDs and domain names are becoming more and more meaningless every day.

If you’re looking for a new pair of Oakley flak jackets with vr50 lenses, do you go to Oakley.com, Oakley.co.uk, Oakley.sunglasses, Glasses.Oakley, Oak.ley, Oakley.vr50.sunglasses.flakjacket? No of course not, you do what everyone else in the world does and Google for Oakley flakjacket vr50 then click the links that come up.

you aren’t interested in a piece of news and therefore believe that no-one gives a damn?

how unbelievably naive!

You don’t read the original post properly yet still feel obliged to question my intelligence, how unbelievably petulant (I’ll omit the exclamation mark as they’re a worthless grammatical crutch).

Lol at Gunz!
Where it might impact is when people get a shufti at someone’s bookmark list; a whole bunch ending .porn might cause embarrassment… 😳

I wonder if it’s to break away from the mindset that everything is “www.blah.com”?

The theory is that you’ve got machine-name.domain.type (oversimplifying). The www bit became commonplace because everyone copied everyone else; early sites were web. and alsorts. Similarly .com, it’s what the public expect.

The BBC is a good example here. Radio 2’s website is http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 which is just clumsy, having an entire radio station relegated to a folder on a bigger site. What it really should be is radio2.bbc.co.uk but it can’t be because that’s not what people expect. (EDIT – case in point, the forum filter added http:// to the first two examples but not the third)

Extending that example, the BBC have applied for a .bbc TLD under the new rules. So speculatively, they might then move to http://www.radio2.bbc or something. Which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t change much, but it’s a snappier way of doing things whilst keeping in line with what the great unwashed expect a URL to look like.

Personally, I’m of mixed opinion. “.com” being synonymous with “.co.us” should have been stood on in the 90s. Either it should be a free-for-all or it should mean something, this halfway house is messy.

The notion that the TLD should represent the content of the site is something from the early 1990s. Do you buy your bikes from bikes.com or your cars from cars.com?

Whilst I don’t disagree with your points, you’re confusing TLDs and SLDs here.

As long as he doesn’t confuse the with STDs.

I wonder how much extra resources the longer domain names will consume – both down the pipes, and the DNS servers processing the requests…

Wrong thread !!

Oops.

I wonder how much extra resources the longer domain names will consume – both down the pipes, and the DNS servers processing the requests…

I think they’re also implementing low sugar diets for the bits, so it should all even out.

does this mean I don’t have to register in the cook islands anymore?

@ oliverd1981 ha ha ha very clever!

On one hand it’s good because it makes domains more readable

e.g. a channel on youtube might become user.youtube rather than youtube.com/user or user.youtube.com

On the other hand it removes some of the hierarchical domain name structure that we currently have e.g. .com, .uk, .de etc.

Oh and there is the fact that with ICANN charging extortionate amounts of money for these new TLDs, small companies are left completely out of the loop.

If I had a spare £100000 or so, I could buy .sucksballs, and easily have a singletrackworld subdomain. Not sure why I’d want to, but can see there being disputes in the future if I did…

I wonder if it’s to break away from the mindset that everything is “www.blah.com”?

I think domain names are becoming less important than they used to be, now search engines so widely used, for big companies especially. Often now on adverts they just tell you search for xyz rather than give you a website domaine name. Even more so with QR codes.

I bookmark sites I visit all the time, but I rarely type in / need to know a url now.