The fact that private entities can monopolize gTLDs, including words that aren't even made-up or reasonably copy-written (e.g. the MAN group in Europe owns .man) was an embarrassing and dishonorable decision by ICANN. I'm all for having tons of weird, awesome gTLDs, and I'm even for brand-specific gTLDs like .google, but the cost these entities should incur by asking for one to be created is: Anyone can use it.
1. A set number of slots should be opened every 10 years (e.g. 250 new gTLDs every ten years).
2. Entities submit bids for the gTLD slots, in terms of dollars. The 250 highest bids win.
3. If your entity wins a slot, you submit the gTLD you want, and there's a public comment period where claims against the gTLD being created are heard (e.g. if you own the copyright in some jurisdiction and someone else is trying to register it, submit a claim).
4. If it passes, your entity is allowed to register a set number of TLDs on the gTLD (e.g. 100) before anyone else gets access. This is what you bought: The fact that the gTLD exists, and the first 100 domain names on it without competition).
5. It then becomes a real gTLD.
Some variant of this is how it always should have worked, and entities like Google should be forced into a sophie's choice: They could fight .google indefinitely, win, and it'll never become a gTLD, or they could sponsor it, claim the first N domain names, but otherwise make it available to everyone. Of course, they might actually have valid jurisdictional claims against anyone else who tries to register a .google domain on copyright grounds, so maybe they fight and win in the courts against anyone who tries to use it; but the point is that it shouldn't be ICANN's decision.
Nah. Don’t make it complicated. Open the root zone to everyone, we don’t need suffixes anymore other than for leeches to make money. Distribute the responsibility for the root zone, kill off the pest that is the TLD industry once and for all. Domain owners can pay a uniform flat fee to IANA shared among all participating entities that keep the infrastructure up. Everyone can have their own, freely choosable TLD. Trademark holders have a right to claim, with some dispute process similar to what we have now.
This requiring it to be open to everybody is an odd wish, to me. It would seem to discourage something that I don't think is a harm to anyone else: Getting your brand as a TLD (.google being a great example). Google has a trademark on "Google," so no one else can make non-mischeivous use of .google anyway. If they had to let random internet critics and trolls register theworst.google and ihate.google they just wouldn't make one, but that wouldn't make anyone else any better off, especially in the real world we live in where most people still do a double take at TLDs that aren't com, org, edu, or gov (or their nearest country code).
Maybe if we'd always had .yahoo and .aol from the beginning these brand TLDs would be a big signifier of legitimacy and thus we'd be worried about how only big corporations can afford them, but not being able to afford one in our current universe is no handicap in my humble opinion.
Well it's tricky. I don't really have a problem with google owning the .google TLD, because that is a pretty unique name, and is unlikely to be useful for anything besides unrelated to Google. Similarly for .walmart or .microsoft. But .apple is a problem, because it is a common English word, and it isn't unreasonable for say an apple orchard, or an apple cider company to want a .apple domain. Similarly for other brand names like target, zoom, uber, plaid, etc. Even .amazon fits here since it is also the name of a river, a rain forest, and mythological group of women.
But where do you draw the line? How do you decide if a company should be allowed to get a gTLD for their brand? Clearly, having a trademark is not sufficient, as it is possible to get a trademark on a common word, and it is possible for multiple companies to trademark the same word as long as there isn't a risk of confusing them. Is it fair to let google and microsoft get such TLDs for their brands, but not apple and amazon?
Is it tricky? If you have a trademark, you can have a gTLD - simple as that.
Because the problem is how can apple have a trademark on the word “apple”?
For me, the same rules should be enforced for trademarks because an apple orchard might also like to have a trademark but that’s difficult because “apple” is already a trademark.
Edit: as pointed out in the comments, this position doesn't take into account that trademarks are very much national and cultural.
Perhaps one day gTLDs will become free (once the gold rush is over) just as SSL/TLS certificates did with the arrival of Lets Encrypt.
Trademarks are not globally unique (even within a single country!).
A good example of this is the long running legal dispute between Apple Computer and Apple Music, who each held a trademark on "Apple" in their respective domains, and which prevented the Beatles from playing on iTunes for a decade...
The problem isn’t that trademarks are country-based but that trademarks are business area based. You can have multiple trademarks for the same word for different companies if the companies do different things. Apple doesn’t have the right to prevent you from using the word „apple“ to sell lawn mowers.
there was a fight between Apple, the computer company and Apple, the record company (initially owned by The Beatles).
They initially resolved it by The Beatles allowing the other to one to keep its name on the condition they would refrain from entering the music business.
Quotas are sometimes applied to create value of a simple asset aka scarcity (or a bureaucrat tax). Think limited number of taxi medallions or street vendor or liquor licenses. That makes the medallion/license/gtld hold value.
I’m not making an argument for quotas, just explaining why they usually are included. It’s a cheap way to add “market” value to something aka scarcity.
The issue would occur in the suggested system when ICANN decides to one day stop creating 250 domain names down to 25 domain names or some such change that increases the value of the gtlds to ridiculous numbers only the wealthy/well-connected can afford.
Because capitalists run ICANN. Or because adding a monetary barrier reduces spam. If creating a tld is free then there is no system or at least no ICANN.
That was the idea, but from my memory, people chose their own meaning and conventions pretty much from the start. So much about the internet was envisioned with a completely different use case than what it actually was used for, it’s amazing things even kinda worked out in the end.
DNS allows search so we really should have started rejecting everything that isn't qualified with an end dot as punishment to ICANN.. Instead random common names might be treated differently on every network to make sure these people can't issue certs that will be trusted for them in your own network, etc.
Now prioratizing unambiguos naming would be somewhat acceptable if ICANN was tacobell and just a steward of naming on the side.
I'm not sure what you mean by "DNS allows search" -- by the usual definition of "search", the DNS doesn't: it is a lookup mechanism. I'm also not sure who "we" are in your idea or what you mean by "qualified with an end dot": all domains that get looked up implicitly have a "." (a zero length label that signifies the end of the query name) if it isn't explicit.
If you are not a consumer on an ISP emulating dialup it is quite likely that a popular name in a naming convention I.e. 'mercury' resolves to something for you and something for someone at a different firm (mercury.intranet.[firm].not-so-stupid-tld). A cert is possibly not a fully qualified one so when ICANN gives away mercury you need to append .asshat to everything ICANN names.
(Two firms have an unambiguous situation because they don't trust each others private roots but they both trust a cert issued for the public trust as a fqdn which is why TLDs expanding is a form of theft/breakage against every intranet..)
Ah, resolver (not DNS) search paths. They were a really bad idea that can and do lead to leaked queries that can result in all sorts of unpleasantness and risks.
As for certs, AFAIK, you can't get a certificate for a non-fqdn from a public CA since 2015.
I think that the scenario here is where the queries are explicitly not leaking, and you've raised a red herring.
If I understand correctly, the scenario is an internal machine named "george", which is being properly search-pathed and looked up as "george.example.org." with nothing leaking anywhere, becoming vulnerable to Walmart being able to issue certificates in the name "george", because the DNS client library's search pathing is not read out by the layers that simply know the machine as "george".
I'm not totally convinced by the premise here that certificate checkers never read out the final fully-qualified domain name from getaddrinfo().
If icann sells www as a tld domain then your use of www as a machine name you may refer to unqualified is a risk because virtually every piece of software in the world respects public issuance until you delete it all if you can.
The DNS naming confusion was largely dealt with by having a small number of TLDs and rarely referring to complex things like partially specified subdomains, but every once in a while a fool named their machine com, org, or net. (Though these as subdomains were far more toxic.)
I've done plenty of interesting things but a distributed correction attempt for ICANN's incompetence is never going to be adequate. You can read their own work on gTLDs in the past to know they understand this.
There's no leak being discussed. Everyone in the world sets resolving and it is what it is with the current TLDs when ICANN needs more coke money they possibly break every node in the world and a distributed group of thousands has to look if something bad happened.
There is the argument that ICANN should no longer be consulted ever by nodes of consequence but that is an argument that they have failed 100% in their responsibilities.
If you don't care at all about zone delegation and global resolution then you obviously don't have an opinion on how to evaluate ICANNs stewardship of global domain delegation.
We have run out if IPv4 addresses but there is NAT is not a satisfying answer to start. But we have let ICANN polute naming so let's implement shadow naming everywhere is an even less satisfactory answer.
With AI churning out a pretend blog or news site or web shop in a few minutes, that would be hard to enforce. I’m with you on the necessary death to TLDs, though.
The weird thing is, are they even meaningfully used? I don't think I've ever seen a .google URL in the wild, neither for their websites nor for API endpoints.
The Open Root Server Confederation has long since been wound up. But some of the other alternative root servers are still around even now. One example:
However, "imamat" by itself is a generic term, so it's not clear why it should be controlled by a single organization that happens to have it in the name.
There's also .va for the Vatican and .lds for the Mormon faith (and .mormon), and more generic Christian ones like .church. I didn't find any for other religions on a casual search, perhaps because many of them don't have the same degree of centralization.
.VA is a country code TLD, assigned because it is listed in ISO-3166. The others are "generic top-level domains" which had to go through ICANN's new gTLD program, which has a lot of rules (338 pages of them for the 2012 round) and costs a lot of money (US$185K to start with recurrent fees dependent upon the number of registrations). I suspect it isn't about centralization, but rather about perceived cost/benefit ratios.
I struggled to find a non-sarcastic, non-flippant way to say it so I'll just go with factual: I am not surprised that there are entities willing to fight over such an important name.
I am wondering if the Albanian government’s plan to give independence to the Tirana HQ of the Bektashi Sufi Order is ever actually going to happen. If it does, then they’ll be the world’s second country dedicated to a religion… well, currently Iran is a Twelver Shi’a theocracy, but Iran had a long history before it was theocracy, and maybe one day won’t be one anymore; Vatican City and the proposed “Bektashi Muslim Vatican” are countries whose existence is inseparable from being HQ of a religious group.
The odd thing about giving the Bektashis a “Muslim Vatican”, is they are a tiny minuscule sect within Islam, and many conservative Muslims will say “they aren’t Muslims at all”
Tibet was a theocracy with a religious leader for a while until recent times.
Also I think the Albanian plan is more on the lines of Mount Athos: it is technically an in independent administration with independent (monastic) government but still part of the Greek state
> Tibet was a theocracy with a religious leader for a while until recent times.
Yes, but it was still like contemporary Iran - a country which happened to have a theocratic system of government, not a country whose sole raison d'être was to endow a religious group with the trappings of statehood.
> Also I think the Albanian plan is more on the lines of Mount Athos: it is technically an in independent administration with independent (monastic) government but still part of the Greek state
I don’t believe that is true - if you read Albanian PM Edi Rama’s statements on the topic, he always cites the Vatican as his inspiration, not Mount Athos - which makes sense given Rama himself is Catholic, not Orthodox. He isn’t proposing this idea out of any personal belief in Bektashi Islam… a cynic would say he is doing it because it is good PR both for his country and for him personally… he’d surely give more high-minded explanation, in terms of the Albanian state giving a magnanimous gift to the cause of interfaith tolerance and religious moderation… but definitely the model is the Vatican not Mount Athos
True but I don't think the distinction matters to the overall point that it's perfectly ordinary for religious institutions to operate a TLD, regardless of the mechanism that allows for it.
Vatican City is a theocracy, not a religion. You'd technically have to add .uk and many more to the list if you're broadening to all nations with a state religion.
It's the central bureaucratic/theocratic function of a major world religion which, it just so happens, is organized as a micronation instead of as a foundation or something like that. The primary function of the UK is not to run the Anglican church, nor is their king generally thought of as their primary leader.
Interestingly, legally, the Holy See and the Vatican City State are not the same thing.
The one which is the global seat of the Roman Catholic Church, which has existed since ancient times including for a time without any territory after the Papal States were lost, which is internationally sovereign, and the one to which ambassadors to the "Vatican" are accredited is the Holy See, not the Vatican City State.
The one that has .va is Vatican City State, which was created only in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the (then-)Kingdom of Italy. That treaty was signed to return a certain degree of independent territorial authority to the Holy See, including the Vatican City State where it has full sovereignty, to give financial compensation to the Church / the Holy See for the loss of the Papal States, and to address a few other matters.
Yes, the Vatican City State is under the governance of the Holy See as a sovereign entity, but it's the Holy See that's sovereign, not the Vatican City State - and the Holy See would remain legally intact if the Vatican City State were to be physically conquered by a foreign power.
ISO country codes which lead to ccTLD domain names like .va are often given more on the basis of internationally recognized/relevant territorial definition than on the basis of international recognized/relevant sovereignty where those two things diverge. After all, the British Indian Ocean Territory has never itself been sovereign under that name, and Taiwan's international sovereignty is a controversial question, but .io and .tw ccTLDs were still assigned and are universally recognized. it's for the same reason that .va goes with the territory and not with the global church.
I think they mean in the context of a a TLD related to a religious entity. Since uk has a state religion, they meant “add it to the list of religious tlds” along with .va and others mentioned in this thread.
I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country, besides as a quirk of history.
It is smaller than high school campus nearest my house, is not a UN member, and seems to exist solely as a tax haven.
It also has no native citizens. No person has been born in Vatican City in a century and even if you pop out a baby in Vatican City and are you yourself a Vatican City resident and citizen, the baby is not a citizen until made so by legal decree, citizenship which ends the second your employment ends, of course, because citizenship is tied to employment.
It doesn't make sense.
It isn't a country.
It is a tax dodge.
My perspective may be skewed. I value "quirky quirks of quirktastic history" very little.
>I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country
It isn't a country and nobody says that it is. The Holy See is sovereign entity with unique status under international law; the status of the Vatican City is derived from the status of the Holy See. It enjoys that status because practically all countries believe that it should do so.
All relevant parties believe that the Vatican City should be treated as if it's a state, therefore it enjoys the rights and responsibilities of a state, even though it technically isn't one. That is fundamentally how international law works - it's a system of agreements between countries and practice established by historical precedent. The status of the Holy See and the Vatican City is quirky, but that doesn't make it illegitimate.
> The Holy See is sovereign entity with unique status under international law; the status of the Vatican City is derived from the status of the Holy See. It enjoys that status because practically all countries believe that it should do so.
I am only an amateur international lawyer, ask a real one for a more confident answer: but my own understanding is this-the subjects of international law are (1) sovereign states, (2) international organisations established by treaty, (3) sui generis entities; Vatican City is technically an instance of (1) and the Holy See is an instance of (3), and they are technically two distinct subjects of international law, despite having a common sovereign - at least, that’s what I’m pretty sure the Vatican’s own international lawyers will argue… as subjects of international law, both are capable of being parties to treaties, but (generally speaking) the Holy See joins treaties of global interest, Vatican City joins treaties regarding matters of local concern to its own territory. As to where they get this status from, the answer is-customary international law
> I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country, besides as a quirk of history.
It is considered an independent state because some time after the Papal States (a much larger set of holdings that were ruled by the Pope) were annexed by Italy, the Vatican was subsequently granted independence (recognized in a treaty between the Holy See and Italy). Which is pretty typical of why independent states are considered independent states.
Who are the people of the Vatican? The only persons who live there are temporary government employees and not even all of them are citizens because that is optional.
You cannot own property, vote for your government, start your own business, go to school, buy anything except what is stocked in the small canteen, or go to the hospital if you are a Vatican citizen and odds are pretty good you live in Italy anyways.
Imagine if a bank drew a boundary around its Manhattan skyscraper headquarters and declared itself a country called Bankistan whose only residents were janitors, financial analysts, and management-- and most of its citizens live in Brooklyn. Except for the C-suite and senior vice presidents who live in penthouses and the janitors who live in tiny rooms in the basement.
Also the second the bank fires you or you quit or retire, you're no longer a citizen of Bankistan.
At a minimum, a capital-see (heh) Country is something that belongs to you if but in a very, insignificantly, small part.
So my definition of "country" is ill-defined but does not include the Vatican.
Your definition ignores international recognition.
Ultimately, whether you get to act like a country (go to the UN, engage in diplomacy, hold territory) is in large part based on whether other countries recognize you as such. I don't know that it defines country-hood but it's part of the puzzle.
The Vatican is a fascinating example since it's clearly a very different sort of entity than the rest of the countries, yet is still recognized by most of the world's nations.
As johnecheck points out, in a certain level of abstraction, the main way of defining a country is whether other countries consider you a country or not. Even when other countries do consider you a country, what the borders are exactly might not be clearly recognized.
Since countries are political divisions, I'd also argue that this is the main and most important definition.
BTW, even "continents" suffer from this where in the US, Europe and Asia they are defined differently.
Presumably, they submitted a gTLD application to ICANN and paid the — at the time — USD$180k evaluation fee. They likely also made arrangements with some existing registrar to host the actual name servers, rather than doing so themselves.
do companies even use these in the wild or are they buying these TLDs for nothing? ".brother", ".canon", ".nokia", ".panasonic", ".playstation", ".xbox", ".xerox"... there's even ".sandvikcoromant", which is some sort of Swedish metalwork company.
Amazon/AWS use them (.aws), so does Google (.google) but I agree, it is pretty funny how many companies seemed to get on board (out of fear of being left out?) and then...didn't use them for some reason?
yeah if I had to guess there's too much that's already pointed at google.com and with their main business being leveraging cookie data for ad money I bet whoever in the org might think it'd be rad to switch to mail.google, search.google, android.google, etc. gets beaten over the head with a stack of $100 bills anytime he brings it up.
I wonder, would the other browser vendors agree to treat all of .google as one entity in terms of 'same domain rule' if Google promised they aren't selling subdomains to anyone else? I'm not aware of any TLD treated like that presently. So yeah, seems like the corporate domains, at least of adtech titans, will never be used for much but redirects.
George is the clothing brand of the ASDA supermarket chain in the UK, which Walmart used to own. I'm not sure if it's a brand they use worldwide though; I don't really go to Walmart when in the US. Either way, that's why they own it, presumably.
Aside: Sandvik Coromant is a major industrial conglomerate with billions in revenue. Their cutting tools almost certainly made some things you use daily. Not that it has any bearing on them having a tld, but they’re not some random local metal shop, heh.
I wouldn't say it's for nothing. Brands with trademarks have a legal incentive under trademark law to acquire their trademarked name everywhere. Not doing so immediately risks a future legal and bad PR battle if some smaller company acquires it first.
This should be titled Ask HN: because IANA.ORG has nothing to do with the question it's just linkage to an alpha sorted list of TLD present in the root zone.
Wasn't it better when only .com mattered? There are thousands of TLDs now and that forces companies to buy multiple, these domain names are not even memorable anymore specifically because of the TLD part.
Well, it depends. If all you were interested in was getting a "good" (e.g., short) name in .COM, no.
In the late 90s, when NSF allowed Network Solutions to charge for domain names, people complained that they (now Verisign) had a monopoly, so after a number of fine lunches and dinners in far off exotic places (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAHC), there was a proposal to create more top-level domains, created the registry/registrar split, proposed the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (primarily for Intellectual Property owners), etc. Then, the US government stepped in and started a process that led to the creation of ICANN.
The whole point of this exercise was to introduce competition into the domain name system. It did with the registry/registrar split and tried with the registries by having multiple rounds of a limited number of new top-level domains. However, the latter was kind of stupid (IMHO): the switching costs for changing TLDs is way too high for the existence of new TLDs to significantly impact Verisign's monopoly -- instead, it created a bunch of monopolies.
However, people weren't happy with the "limited number" part of ICANN's efforts to introduce competition in the TLD space, so in 2012, the ICANN community (which anyone can be a part of) opened the flood gates, removed the arbitrary restrictions on how new top-level domains could be created, and we now have over 1500 TLDs.
It's still basically only .com that matters. There are those few others that matter commercially (setting aside the org for nonprofits and edu and gov), such as .io, but for every 'clever domain' startup, I see 6 more who, unable to get say, frog dot com, go with something like "usefrog dot com" or "tryfrog dot com" in their early days and come back and snap up frog dot com after they get their Series C. They could have gotten say, frog dot legal or frog dot engineering but nobody wants those.
This is really interesting, as the chain uses bauhaus.info here in Germany, presumably because the .de and .com domains were already taken, but they didn't bother to register de.bauhaus.
FWIW, Google owns .gle, and I emailed both Sundar Pichai and Charleston Registry, but no response of any kind.
My startup is called MedAngle, and we'd love to get medan.gle, but it just left a sour taste in my mouth. Some of these processes are giant black boxes.
I don't think Sundar is likely to go through with your request personally. Your best bet might be if you know an internal engineer working close to their domain management, but even then I'd doubt they'd register it for an external startup. There are currently 21 domains under gle, all related to Google products.
Actually, no — it's an evaluation fee, simply to review your application; and they will reject applications that don't meet their criteria.
One of those criteria is that you actually do something with the gTLD — per their FAQ:
> ICANN expects all new gTLDs to be operational. One of the reasons ICANN is opening the top-level space is to allow for competition and innovation in the marketplace. The application process requires applicants to provide a detailed plan for the launch and operation of the proposed gTLD. gTLDs are expected to be delegated within one year of signing a registry agreement with ICANN.
- They will reject applications made by known cybersquatters
- They will reject your TLD string if it has rendering problems on major OSes (e.g. if its codepoints aren't covered by at least fallback fonts)
- They will reject your registration policies if they're incoherent or unenforceable
- They will reject your application on behalf of a community if you can't provide sufficient references establishing that you actually represent the interests of that community
- They will reject your application if you haven't outlined to their satisfaction a plan for continuity/migration of control of the gTLD from your organization to some other organization in case of the bankruptcy/dissolution/etc of your organization (note: this is a separate thing from the technical considerations of registry fail-over et al, which are more something that most applicants would have a technical registry partner fill out on their behalf)
---
In all, the process actually seems quite thorough — but as with regular domain-name registration, it's a default-accept, not a default-deny, policy. The more arbitrary gTLDs that have been established so far all just-so-happen to be "innocent" of all of the disqualifiers.
Specifically, I think, given the criteria, that any multinational company could probably expect to be able to acquire its own name and trademarks as gTLDs without much fuss; and recognized leaders/stewards of any major religion (or other non-country-endemic sociocultural group) could likely get any jargon term specific to that religion/subculture as a gTLD. Those two cases together cover most of the "weirdness" in approved applications.
One assertion I might make after reviewing the evaluation criteria, is that very few of the criteria look at the gTLD string itself. Almost any gTLD string is a potentially valid registration. Almost all of the evaluation process is set up to establish whether you, the applicant, have a valid claim for stewardship over the given gTLD string.
It’s part of the initial process for you to develop and file contingency plans in case happens. Most likely delegating to a different company in one way or another.
The Ismaili leaders are super influential and have connections everywhere. They are megawealthy socialites. Basically they wanted the TLDs so they knew who to talk to to make it happen.
Right. I wanted to send a pic of the previous Aga Khan to someone recently and the first pic that came up was him hanging out with King Charles. IIRC their HQ in Portugal has a similar semi-autonomous status to the Vatican inside Rome.
The British monarchy and the Aga Khan have very strong associations. Weird trivia: the right for the Aga Khan to call himself "His Highness" is by title granted by the British monarchy, like some kind of weird accreditation.
If you want a fun way to spend the rest of your afternoon, just prefix any of these with "nic." and enter in your web browser. Interestingly, for example, it seems that .ninja is ran by what appears to be actual ninjas.
Anything besides the classic .com, .org, .net, .gov, or well-known ccTLDs usually gets ignored as spam in my search results, so for me, however much they paid for an unusual TLD was of negative value.
TLDs were a mistake. We should just get rid of them and have the person's domain at the top level. E.g. instead of news.ycombinator.com have just news.ycombinator
Same situation when two people named John Smith want the same john-smith.com domain now. You may argue that in the current situation, if they are from different countries like US and Canada, they would obtain john-smith.us and john-smith.ca respectively. But in the proposed situation, they can also get john-smith-us and john-smith-ca
All it takes for a TLD these days is a vaugely-legitimate use and about a million dollars[1]. This isn't hard for a large company or state actor to fund; Why would a
mid-large religion not be able to?
And a time machine. Applications were due in 2012. A new round is starting soon, but it's not clear if it's going to be continuous, or if it will be a single application period again.
It would be helpful if you would explain why you think it is surprising or confusing or objectionable or whatever else inspired you to ask. Also helpful would be examples that you think are similar in some way, but that are not surprising, etc.
As is, your question is practically impossible to answer without just pointing you to the ICANN process.
Presumably way the same as .google and all the other special-purpose organization-specific domains.
Blame ICANN for allowing any public or private organization who can meet the requirements to buy and operate a gTLD back in 2012: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs...
And as per another comment in this thread, they’re doing another round of this in 2026: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45068328
The fact that private entities can monopolize gTLDs, including words that aren't even made-up or reasonably copy-written (e.g. the MAN group in Europe owns .man) was an embarrassing and dishonorable decision by ICANN. I'm all for having tons of weird, awesome gTLDs, and I'm even for brand-specific gTLDs like .google, but the cost these entities should incur by asking for one to be created is: Anyone can use it.
1. A set number of slots should be opened every 10 years (e.g. 250 new gTLDs every ten years).
2. Entities submit bids for the gTLD slots, in terms of dollars. The 250 highest bids win.
3. If your entity wins a slot, you submit the gTLD you want, and there's a public comment period where claims against the gTLD being created are heard (e.g. if you own the copyright in some jurisdiction and someone else is trying to register it, submit a claim).
4. If it passes, your entity is allowed to register a set number of TLDs on the gTLD (e.g. 100) before anyone else gets access. This is what you bought: The fact that the gTLD exists, and the first 100 domain names on it without competition).
5. It then becomes a real gTLD.
Some variant of this is how it always should have worked, and entities like Google should be forced into a sophie's choice: They could fight .google indefinitely, win, and it'll never become a gTLD, or they could sponsor it, claim the first N domain names, but otherwise make it available to everyone. Of course, they might actually have valid jurisdictional claims against anyone else who tries to register a .google domain on copyright grounds, so maybe they fight and win in the courts against anyone who tries to use it; but the point is that it shouldn't be ICANN's decision.
Nah. Don’t make it complicated. Open the root zone to everyone, we don’t need suffixes anymore other than for leeches to make money. Distribute the responsibility for the root zone, kill off the pest that is the TLD industry once and for all. Domain owners can pay a uniform flat fee to IANA shared among all participating entities that keep the infrastructure up. Everyone can have their own, freely choosable TLD. Trademark holders have a right to claim, with some dispute process similar to what we have now.
It would be glorious.
This requiring it to be open to everybody is an odd wish, to me. It would seem to discourage something that I don't think is a harm to anyone else: Getting your brand as a TLD (.google being a great example). Google has a trademark on "Google," so no one else can make non-mischeivous use of .google anyway. If they had to let random internet critics and trolls register theworst.google and ihate.google they just wouldn't make one, but that wouldn't make anyone else any better off, especially in the real world we live in where most people still do a double take at TLDs that aren't com, org, edu, or gov (or their nearest country code).
Maybe if we'd always had .yahoo and .aol from the beginning these brand TLDs would be a big signifier of legitimacy and thus we'd be worried about how only big corporations can afford them, but not being able to afford one in our current universe is no handicap in my humble opinion.
Well it's tricky. I don't really have a problem with google owning the .google TLD, because that is a pretty unique name, and is unlikely to be useful for anything besides unrelated to Google. Similarly for .walmart or .microsoft. But .apple is a problem, because it is a common English word, and it isn't unreasonable for say an apple orchard, or an apple cider company to want a .apple domain. Similarly for other brand names like target, zoom, uber, plaid, etc. Even .amazon fits here since it is also the name of a river, a rain forest, and mythological group of women.
But where do you draw the line? How do you decide if a company should be allowed to get a gTLD for their brand? Clearly, having a trademark is not sufficient, as it is possible to get a trademark on a common word, and it is possible for multiple companies to trademark the same word as long as there isn't a risk of confusing them. Is it fair to let google and microsoft get such TLDs for their brands, but not apple and amazon?
Is it tricky? If you have a trademark, you can have a gTLD - simple as that.
Because the problem is how can apple have a trademark on the word “apple”?
For me, the same rules should be enforced for trademarks because an apple orchard might also like to have a trademark but that’s difficult because “apple” is already a trademark.
Edit: as pointed out in the comments, this position doesn't take into account that trademarks are very much national and cultural.
Perhaps one day gTLDs will become free (once the gold rush is over) just as SSL/TLS certificates did with the arrival of Lets Encrypt.
Trademarks are not globally unique (even within a single country!).
A good example of this is the long running legal dispute between Apple Computer and Apple Music, who each held a trademark on "Apple" in their respective domains, and which prevented the Beatles from playing on iTunes for a decade...
You seem to be missing that trademarks are generally context specific
E.g. Apple has a trademark in the context of technology but not in the context of farming
Whereas gTLDs are flat namespace
Ok, good point. I assumed global trademarks but yes trademarks are nation based.
Should then only multi-national organisations be allowed to obtain gTLDs?
Obviously the ICANN price tag of USD227k is also a good entry barrier.
The problem isn’t that trademarks are country-based but that trademarks are business area based. You can have multiple trademarks for the same word for different companies if the companies do different things. Apple doesn’t have the right to prevent you from using the word „apple“ to sell lawn mowers.
there was a fight between Apple, the computer company and Apple, the record company (initially owned by The Beatles). They initially resolved it by The Beatles allowing the other to one to keep its name on the condition they would refrain from entering the music business.
We all know how that turned out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Records
How did it turn out? Seems like both still have their trademark and everyone lived happily ever after
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
The Beatles got richer, and then got a whole lot richer.
But why do they need to do that as a TLD? They have google.com and other iterations.
> The fact that private entities can monopolize gTLDs, including words that aren't even made-up or reasonably copy-written
I'm reminded when the people of the Amazon rainforest petitioned to own .amazon, but it was given to the US company.
What should happen with the proceeds of the sales?
Is the highest bidder really the best custodian of a tld?
Why have a quota of, as you say, 250 every 10 years? What does this do to help, what issues does it address?
Quotas are sometimes applied to create value of a simple asset aka scarcity (or a bureaucrat tax). Think limited number of taxi medallions or street vendor or liquor licenses. That makes the medallion/license/gtld hold value.
> Think limited number of taxi medallions or street vendor or liquor licenses.
Those are not particularly compelling examples in favor of such a thing.
I’m not making an argument for quotas, just explaining why they usually are included. It’s a cheap way to add “market” value to something aka scarcity.
The issue would occur in the suggested system when ICANN decides to one day stop creating 250 domain names down to 25 domain names or some such change that increases the value of the gtlds to ridiculous numbers only the wealthy/well-connected can afford.
Why is the goal to artificially increase the value of tld's?
Because capitalists run ICANN. Or because adding a monetary barrier reduces spam. If creating a tld is free then there is no system or at least no ICANN.
The cost for a gTLD used to be $1-2 million USD. I wonder if it is still the same pay-to-play racket for rich people and corporations.
how can someone copyright a TLD?
He probably means trademark, eg, .google
Genuine question: why “blame”? Does it really matter?
yes blame. ofcourse it matters. tld use to be good insight into the purpose of the website. IE, google.com, or wikipedia.org
With some exceptions (.gov, .edu, for example), it has never actually meant anything. Anyone can register a .com, .net, or .org for any purpose.
I thought com/net/org had distinct use cases until the early 1990s when it became a free-for-all.
That was the idea, but from my memory, people chose their own meaning and conventions pretty much from the start. So much about the internet was envisioned with a completely different use case than what it actually was used for, it’s amazing things even kinda worked out in the end.
Those tlds still exist. The existence of butts.adult doesn’t create confusion about oxfam.org
You misled me, butts.adult does in fact not exist.
Oh wow. That seems like an oversight. Somebody with $400 to burn could either support or refute my point on this matter
DNS allows search so we really should have started rejecting everything that isn't qualified with an end dot as punishment to ICANN.. Instead random common names might be treated differently on every network to make sure these people can't issue certs that will be trusted for them in your own network, etc.
Now prioratizing unambiguos naming would be somewhat acceptable if ICANN was tacobell and just a steward of naming on the side.
I'm not sure what you mean by "DNS allows search" -- by the usual definition of "search", the DNS doesn't: it is a lookup mechanism. I'm also not sure who "we" are in your idea or what you mean by "qualified with an end dot": all domains that get looked up implicitly have a "." (a zero length label that signifies the end of the query name) if it isn't explicit.
resolv.conf-> search
If you are not a consumer on an ISP emulating dialup it is quite likely that a popular name in a naming convention I.e. 'mercury' resolves to something for you and something for someone at a different firm (mercury.intranet.[firm].not-so-stupid-tld). A cert is possibly not a fully qualified one so when ICANN gives away mercury you need to append .asshat to everything ICANN names.
(Two firms have an unambiguous situation because they don't trust each others private roots but they both trust a cert issued for the public trust as a fqdn which is why TLDs expanding is a form of theft/breakage against every intranet..)
Ah, resolver (not DNS) search paths. They were a really bad idea that can and do lead to leaked queries that can result in all sorts of unpleasantness and risks.
As for certs, AFAIK, you can't get a certificate for a non-fqdn from a public CA since 2015.
Run your own DNS then, if you're using your own DNS? Why are your queries for internal systems leaking out to the internet?
I think that the scenario here is where the queries are explicitly not leaking, and you've raised a red herring.
If I understand correctly, the scenario is an internal machine named "george", which is being properly search-pathed and looked up as "george.example.org." with nothing leaking anywhere, becoming vulnerable to Walmart being able to issue certificates in the name "george", because the DNS client library's search pathing is not read out by the layers that simply know the machine as "george".
I'm not totally convinced by the premise here that certificate checkers never read out the final fully-qualified domain name from getaddrinfo().
If icann sells www as a tld domain then your use of www as a machine name you may refer to unqualified is a risk because virtually every piece of software in the world respects public issuance until you delete it all if you can.
The DNS naming confusion was largely dealt with by having a small number of TLDs and rarely referring to complex things like partially specified subdomains, but every once in a while a fool named their machine com, org, or net. (Though these as subdomains were far more toxic.)
You might want to look at the "domain" directive of resolv.conf and the concept of "split horizon DNS".
I've done plenty of interesting things but a distributed correction attempt for ICANN's incompetence is never going to be adequate. You can read their own work on gTLDs in the past to know they understand this.
Accusing ICANN of incompetence when you can't be bothered to configure your DNS to avoid leaking queries to the root is an interesting approach.
There's no leak being discussed. Everyone in the world sets resolving and it is what it is with the current TLDs when ICANN needs more coke money they possibly break every node in the world and a distributed group of thousands has to look if something bad happened.
There is the argument that ICANN should no longer be consulted ever by nodes of consequence but that is an argument that they have failed 100% in their responsibilities.
If you don't care at all about zone delegation and global resolution then you obviously don't have an opinion on how to evaluate ICANNs stewardship of global domain delegation.
We have run out if IPv4 addresses but there is NAT is not a satisfying answer to start. But we have let ICANN polute naming so let's implement shadow naming everywhere is an even less satisfactory answer.
all the ISPs I've used just resolve any possible DNS query to an IP anyways, so I'm not really sure what it matters
Hot take: TLDs should not exist but parking domains should not be allowed.
With AI churning out a pretend blog or news site or web shop in a few minutes, that would be hard to enforce. I’m with you on the necessary death to TLDs, though.
And cost if domains should increase near exponentially with the more you own. One domain? $10/year, two domains: $50, three: $250, etc.
Without rigorous ID requirements, that restriction can be circumvented easily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Spamming up namespaces for "commercial" purposes is never a good thing.
The weird thing is, are they even meaningfully used? I don't think I've ever seen a .google URL in the wild, neither for their websites nor for API endpoints.
Well, there is https://www.registry.google/
And MS is increasingly dropping the .com: https://cloud.microsoft/
Time for another DNS root system. Maybe. /s
The Open Root Server Confederation has long since been wound up. But some of the other alternative root servers are still around even now. One example:
https://wiki.opennic.org/opennic/dot
> The Ismaili Imamat is a supra-national entity, representing the succession of Imams since the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
(https://ismaili.imamat/#introduction)
The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Imamat.
They have as good a claim to a TLD as Berlin, if not more.
However, "imamat" by itself is a generic term, so it's not clear why it should be controlled by a single organization that happens to have it in the name.
Given that this discussion was started by someone mentioning only these 3 related things, I'd guess that the motivation might a negative one.
And indeed, the KSA rep has opposed it:
https://slate.com/technology/2012/08/icann-top-level-domain-...
Aren't there tons of generic terms gTLD controlled by a single organizations now?
I've just learned here that .man is owned/controlled by the MAN group
edit: source: https://icannwiki.org/.man
also: walmart applied for .george https://icannwiki.org/.george
> ismaili.imamat
So, a quite expensive domain hack? Are they trending again? There's even a list on domainhacks.club
There's also .va for the Vatican and .lds for the Mormon faith (and .mormon), and more generic Christian ones like .church. I didn't find any for other religions on a casual search, perhaps because many of them don't have the same degree of centralization.
.VA is a country code TLD, assigned because it is listed in ISO-3166. The others are "generic top-level domains" which had to go through ICANN's new gTLD program, which has a lot of rules (338 pages of them for the 2012 round) and costs a lot of money (US$185K to start with recurrent fees dependent upon the number of registrations). I suspect it isn't about centralization, but rather about perceived cost/benefit ratios.
.islam is proposed but contested: https://icannwiki.org/.islam
I struggled to find a non-sarcastic, non-flippant way to say it so I'll just go with factual: I am not surprised that there are entities willing to fight over such an important name.
The Vatican is a country, so it gets a ccTLD.
I am wondering if the Albanian government’s plan to give independence to the Tirana HQ of the Bektashi Sufi Order is ever actually going to happen. If it does, then they’ll be the world’s second country dedicated to a religion… well, currently Iran is a Twelver Shi’a theocracy, but Iran had a long history before it was theocracy, and maybe one day won’t be one anymore; Vatican City and the proposed “Bektashi Muslim Vatican” are countries whose existence is inseparable from being HQ of a religious group.
The odd thing about giving the Bektashis a “Muslim Vatican”, is they are a tiny minuscule sect within Islam, and many conservative Muslims will say “they aren’t Muslims at all”
Tibet was a theocracy with a religious leader for a while until recent times.
Also I think the Albanian plan is more on the lines of Mount Athos: it is technically an in independent administration with independent (monastic) government but still part of the Greek state
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastic_community_of_Mount_...
> Tibet was a theocracy with a religious leader for a while until recent times.
Yes, but it was still like contemporary Iran - a country which happened to have a theocratic system of government, not a country whose sole raison d'être was to endow a religious group with the trappings of statehood.
> Also I think the Albanian plan is more on the lines of Mount Athos: it is technically an in independent administration with independent (monastic) government but still part of the Greek state
I don’t believe that is true - if you read Albanian PM Edi Rama’s statements on the topic, he always cites the Vatican as his inspiration, not Mount Athos - which makes sense given Rama himself is Catholic, not Orthodox. He isn’t proposing this idea out of any personal belief in Bektashi Islam… a cynic would say he is doing it because it is good PR both for his country and for him personally… he’d surely give more high-minded explanation, in terms of the Albanian state giving a magnanimous gift to the cause of interfaith tolerance and religious moderation… but definitely the model is the Vatican not Mount Athos
True but I don't think the distinction matters to the overall point that it's perfectly ordinary for religious institutions to operate a TLD, regardless of the mechanism that allows for it.
Vatican City is a theocracy, not a religion. You'd technically have to add .uk and many more to the list if you're broadening to all nations with a state religion.
It's the central bureaucratic/theocratic function of a major world religion which, it just so happens, is organized as a micronation instead of as a foundation or something like that. The primary function of the UK is not to run the Anglican church, nor is their king generally thought of as their primary leader.
Interestingly, legally, the Holy See and the Vatican City State are not the same thing.
The one which is the global seat of the Roman Catholic Church, which has existed since ancient times including for a time without any territory after the Papal States were lost, which is internationally sovereign, and the one to which ambassadors to the "Vatican" are accredited is the Holy See, not the Vatican City State.
The one that has .va is Vatican City State, which was created only in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the (then-)Kingdom of Italy. That treaty was signed to return a certain degree of independent territorial authority to the Holy See, including the Vatican City State where it has full sovereignty, to give financial compensation to the Church / the Holy See for the loss of the Papal States, and to address a few other matters.
Yes, the Vatican City State is under the governance of the Holy See as a sovereign entity, but it's the Holy See that's sovereign, not the Vatican City State - and the Holy See would remain legally intact if the Vatican City State were to be physically conquered by a foreign power.
ISO country codes which lead to ccTLD domain names like .va are often given more on the basis of internationally recognized/relevant territorial definition than on the basis of international recognized/relevant sovereignty where those two things diverge. After all, the British Indian Ocean Territory has never itself been sovereign under that name, and Taiwan's international sovereignty is a controversial question, but .io and .tw ccTLDs were still assigned and are universally recognized. it's for the same reason that .va goes with the territory and not with the global church.
.uk was one of the first!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uk
(Or did I miss an "/s"?)
I think they mean in the context of a a TLD related to a religious entity. Since uk has a state religion, they meant “add it to the list of religious tlds” along with .va and others mentioned in this thread.
I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country, besides as a quirk of history.
It is smaller than high school campus nearest my house, is not a UN member, and seems to exist solely as a tax haven.
It also has no native citizens. No person has been born in Vatican City in a century and even if you pop out a baby in Vatican City and are you yourself a Vatican City resident and citizen, the baby is not a citizen until made so by legal decree, citizenship which ends the second your employment ends, of course, because citizenship is tied to employment.
It doesn't make sense.
It isn't a country.
It is a tax dodge.
My perspective may be skewed. I value "quirky quirks of quirktastic history" very little.
>I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country
It isn't a country and nobody says that it is. The Holy See is sovereign entity with unique status under international law; the status of the Vatican City is derived from the status of the Holy See. It enjoys that status because practically all countries believe that it should do so.
All relevant parties believe that the Vatican City should be treated as if it's a state, therefore it enjoys the rights and responsibilities of a state, even though it technically isn't one. That is fundamentally how international law works - it's a system of agreements between countries and practice established by historical precedent. The status of the Holy See and the Vatican City is quirky, but that doesn't make it illegitimate.
> It isn't a country and nobody says that it is.
Well, the CIA says it is: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/holy-see-va...
> The Holy See is sovereign entity with unique status under international law; the status of the Vatican City is derived from the status of the Holy See. It enjoys that status because practically all countries believe that it should do so.
I am only an amateur international lawyer, ask a real one for a more confident answer: but my own understanding is this-the subjects of international law are (1) sovereign states, (2) international organisations established by treaty, (3) sui generis entities; Vatican City is technically an instance of (1) and the Holy See is an instance of (3), and they are technically two distinct subjects of international law, despite having a common sovereign - at least, that’s what I’m pretty sure the Vatican’s own international lawyers will argue… as subjects of international law, both are capable of being parties to treaties, but (generally speaking) the Holy See joins treaties of global interest, Vatican City joins treaties regarding matters of local concern to its own territory. As to where they get this status from, the answer is-customary international law
> I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country, besides as a quirk of history.
It is considered an independent state because some time after the Papal States (a much larger set of holdings that were ruled by the Pope) were annexed by Italy, the Vatican was subsequently granted independence (recognized in a treaty between the Holy See and Italy). Which is pretty typical of why independent states are considered independent states.
What is a country for you? How do you define it? Is the land size that important?
A country must have a people.
Who are the people of the Vatican? The only persons who live there are temporary government employees and not even all of them are citizens because that is optional.
You cannot own property, vote for your government, start your own business, go to school, buy anything except what is stocked in the small canteen, or go to the hospital if you are a Vatican citizen and odds are pretty good you live in Italy anyways.
Imagine if a bank drew a boundary around its Manhattan skyscraper headquarters and declared itself a country called Bankistan whose only residents were janitors, financial analysts, and management-- and most of its citizens live in Brooklyn. Except for the C-suite and senior vice presidents who live in penthouses and the janitors who live in tiny rooms in the basement.
Also the second the bank fires you or you quit or retire, you're no longer a citizen of Bankistan.
At a minimum, a capital-see (heh) Country is something that belongs to you if but in a very, insignificantly, small part.
So my definition of "country" is ill-defined but does not include the Vatican.
Your definition ignores international recognition.
Ultimately, whether you get to act like a country (go to the UN, engage in diplomacy, hold territory) is in large part based on whether other countries recognize you as such. I don't know that it defines country-hood but it's part of the puzzle.
The Vatican is a fascinating example since it's clearly a very different sort of entity than the rest of the countries, yet is still recognized by most of the world's nations.
Historically the Vatican is also a way to allow the Papal States to “give up” their claim on, well, the Papal States.
It works out pretty well for everyone, so it continues.
As johnecheck points out, in a certain level of abstraction, the main way of defining a country is whether other countries consider you a country or not. Even when other countries do consider you a country, what the borders are exactly might not be clearly recognized.
Since countries are political divisions, I'd also argue that this is the main and most important definition.
BTW, even "continents" suffer from this where in the US, Europe and Asia they are defined differently.
Presumably, they submitted a gTLD application to ICANN and paid the — at the time — USD$180k evaluation fee. They likely also made arrangements with some existing registrar to host the actual name servers, rather than doing so themselves.
They may or may not have then had the evaluation fee refunded to them, under the Applicant Support Program (https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/application-rounds/round...).
the icann wiki has some articles for these:
https://icannwiki.org/.agakhan
https://icannwiki.org/.ismaili
https://icannwiki.org/.imamat
.george is a pretty funny one. apparently Walmart owns it, so you probably won't be able to register a .george domain any time soon.
https://icannwiki.org/.george
do companies even use these in the wild or are they buying these TLDs for nothing? ".brother", ".canon", ".nokia", ".panasonic", ".playstation", ".xbox", ".xerox"... there's even ".sandvikcoromant", which is some sort of Swedish metalwork company.
Amazon/AWS use them (.aws), so does Google (.google) but I agree, it is pretty funny how many companies seemed to get on board (out of fear of being left out?) and then...didn't use them for some reason?
Google does use theirs for public-facing landing pages even [1], just not uniformly, but that's very on-brand for Google as an org.
Where have you seen .aws in use though?
[1] e.g. https://quantumai.google/
https://skillbuilder.aws/
notebooklm.google too
yeah if I had to guess there's too much that's already pointed at google.com and with their main business being leveraging cookie data for ad money I bet whoever in the org might think it'd be rad to switch to mail.google, search.google, android.google, etc. gets beaten over the head with a stack of $100 bills anytime he brings it up.
I wonder, would the other browser vendors agree to treat all of .google as one entity in terms of 'same domain rule' if Google promised they aren't selling subdomains to anyone else? I'm not aware of any TLD treated like that presently. So yeah, seems like the corporate domains, at least of adtech titans, will never be used for much but redirects.
https://calculator.aws
AWS uses the TLD internally
George is the clothing brand of the ASDA supermarket chain in the UK, which Walmart used to own. I'm not sure if it's a brand they use worldwide though; I don't really go to Walmart when in the US. Either way, that's why they own it, presumably.
When a supermarket's own clothing brand has its own TLD. What a time to be alive.
Just checked underpants.george and, disappointingly, it's not being used.
https://www.walmart.com/search?q=George finds quite a bit but why they’d pay for that TLD and not for any of the other store brands they have is unknown.
At least as far back as the the 90s Walmart was selling George clothing in the US too. IDK what predates what, though. Or if they are currently.
There was also a George magazine, which... I think belonged to RFK (Senior)?
Correction: JFK Junior, of course!
Aside: Sandvik Coromant is a major industrial conglomerate with billions in revenue. Their cutting tools almost certainly made some things you use daily. Not that it has any bearing on them having a tld, but they’re not some random local metal shop, heh.
I wouldn't say it's for nothing. Brands with trademarks have a legal incentive under trademark law to acquire their trademarked name everywhere. Not doing so immediately risks a future legal and bad PR battle if some smaller company acquires it first.
https://global.canon/en/c-museum/
Canon does use .canon for a few things, at least.
Brother has a similar global website.
https://global.brother/
Anything to help them win the fight against HP, I’m for.
This should be titled Ask HN: because IANA.ORG has nothing to do with the question it's just linkage to an alpha sorted list of TLD present in the root zone.
Wasn't it better when only .com mattered? There are thousands of TLDs now and that forces companies to buy multiple, these domain names are not even memorable anymore specifically because of the TLD part.
Well, it depends. If all you were interested in was getting a "good" (e.g., short) name in .COM, no.
In the late 90s, when NSF allowed Network Solutions to charge for domain names, people complained that they (now Verisign) had a monopoly, so after a number of fine lunches and dinners in far off exotic places (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAHC), there was a proposal to create more top-level domains, created the registry/registrar split, proposed the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (primarily for Intellectual Property owners), etc. Then, the US government stepped in and started a process that led to the creation of ICANN.
The whole point of this exercise was to introduce competition into the domain name system. It did with the registry/registrar split and tried with the registries by having multiple rounds of a limited number of new top-level domains. However, the latter was kind of stupid (IMHO): the switching costs for changing TLDs is way too high for the existence of new TLDs to significantly impact Verisign's monopoly -- instead, it created a bunch of monopolies.
However, people weren't happy with the "limited number" part of ICANN's efforts to introduce competition in the TLD space, so in 2012, the ICANN community (which anyone can be a part of) opened the flood gates, removed the arbitrary restrictions on how new top-level domains could be created, and we now have over 1500 TLDs.
It's still basically only .com that matters. There are those few others that matter commercially (setting aside the org for nonprofits and edu and gov), such as .io, but for every 'clever domain' startup, I see 6 more who, unable to get say, frog dot com, go with something like "usefrog dot com" or "tryfrog dot com" in their early days and come back and snap up frog dot com after they get their Series C. They could have gotten say, frog dot legal or frog dot engineering but nobody wants those.
I find the the Dutch Bauhaus website ridiculously unnecessary: https://nl.bauhaus
This is really interesting, as the chain uses bauhaus.info here in Germany, presumably because the .de and .com domains were already taken, but they didn't bother to register de.bauhaus.
FWIW, Google owns .gle, and I emailed both Sundar Pichai and Charleston Registry, but no response of any kind.
My startup is called MedAngle, and we'd love to get medan.gle, but it just left a sour taste in my mouth. Some of these processes are giant black boxes.
I don't think Sundar is likely to go through with your request personally. Your best bet might be if you know an internal engineer working close to their domain management, but even then I'd doubt they'd register it for an external startup. There are currently 21 domains under gle, all related to Google products.
Google is the biggest squatter. https://captnemo.in/tld-squatting/
.calvinklein, .homedepot - how do these things get created, can you just go to namecheap.com and make your own tld?
If you pay ICANN hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can get basically any .word domain.
I believe the only actual requirement is that it has to be 3 characters or longer, as two characters are reserved for countries.
Actually, no — it's an evaluation fee, simply to review your application; and they will reject applications that don't meet their criteria.
One of those criteria is that you actually do something with the gTLD — per their FAQ:
> ICANN expects all new gTLDs to be operational. One of the reasons ICANN is opening the top-level space is to allow for competition and innovation in the marketplace. The application process requires applicants to provide a detailed plan for the launch and operation of the proposed gTLD. gTLDs are expected to be delegated within one year of signing a registry agreement with ICANN.
A few highlights from the full evaluation criteria (https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/evaluation-qu...):
- They will reject applications made by known cybersquatters
- They will reject your TLD string if it has rendering problems on major OSes (e.g. if its codepoints aren't covered by at least fallback fonts)
- They will reject your registration policies if they're incoherent or unenforceable
- They will reject your application on behalf of a community if you can't provide sufficient references establishing that you actually represent the interests of that community
- They will reject your application if you haven't outlined to their satisfaction a plan for continuity/migration of control of the gTLD from your organization to some other organization in case of the bankruptcy/dissolution/etc of your organization (note: this is a separate thing from the technical considerations of registry fail-over et al, which are more something that most applicants would have a technical registry partner fill out on their behalf)
---
In all, the process actually seems quite thorough — but as with regular domain-name registration, it's a default-accept, not a default-deny, policy. The more arbitrary gTLDs that have been established so far all just-so-happen to be "innocent" of all of the disqualifiers.
Specifically, I think, given the criteria, that any multinational company could probably expect to be able to acquire its own name and trademarks as gTLDs without much fuss; and recognized leaders/stewards of any major religion (or other non-country-endemic sociocultural group) could likely get any jargon term specific to that religion/subculture as a gTLD. Those two cases together cover most of the "weirdness" in approved applications.
One assertion I might make after reviewing the evaluation criteria, is that very few of the criteria look at the gTLD string itself. Almost any gTLD string is a potentially valid registration. Almost all of the evaluation process is set up to establish whether you, the applicant, have a valid claim for stewardship over the given gTLD string.
Application fee with ICANN: $185k, non-refundable,
Yearly fee: $25k
Technical backend with Verisign: $200k per year
Add maybe $100k of lawyer fees.
What happens when a company goes under and the yearly fee can no longer be paid? Has a gTLD ever been resigned?
From the ICANN site, 154 gTLD agreements have been terminated. I'm not sure how many due to non-payment, but https://domainincite.com/30105-icann-to-terminate-five-new-g... indicates that at least some have been due to non-payment.
https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements?sort-column=top...
".active" is no longer active...
It’s part of the initial process for you to develop and file contingency plans in case happens. Most likely delegating to a different company in one way or another.
time to start fundraising for .fhqwhgads
I’m there for it; all told it’s not much more than a house …
That's crazy, why is it so expensive
Imagine having the domain cyber[.]threat
Would be kind of cool, most attacked domain on the web, probably
I think my top three worst ideas someone actually paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for are .sucks, .ooo, and .hiv.
.sucks has plenty of potential
you pay ICANN a hefty fee.
https://icannwiki.org/New_gTLD_Program:_Next_Round
The Ismaili leaders are super influential and have connections everywhere. They are megawealthy socialites. Basically they wanted the TLDs so they knew who to talk to to make it happen.
Right. I wanted to send a pic of the previous Aga Khan to someone recently and the first pic that came up was him hanging out with King Charles. IIRC their HQ in Portugal has a similar semi-autonomous status to the Vatican inside Rome.
The British monarchy and the Aga Khan have very strong associations. Weird trivia: the right for the Aga Khan to call himself "His Highness" is by title granted by the British monarchy, like some kind of weird accreditation.
https://www.royal.uk/news-and-activity/2025-02-10/the-king-i...
Even this random German insurance reseller (some call it a pyramid scheme) DVAG has its own TLD. You can buy anything with money.
Even EDEKA has its own. :-) https://www.nic.edeka
Super geil !
If you want a fun way to spend the rest of your afternoon, just prefix any of these with "nic." and enter in your web browser. Interestingly, for example, it seems that .ninja is ran by what appears to be actual ninjas.
Actual ninjas? How so? http://nic.ninja (not https!) redirects to https://www.identity.digital/
Anything besides the classic .com, .org, .net, .gov, or well-known ccTLDs usually gets ignored as spam in my search results, so for me, however much they paid for an unusual TLD was of negative value.
TLDs were a mistake. We should just get rid of them and have the person's domain at the top level. E.g. instead of news.ycombinator.com have just news.ycombinator
What if there are two people named John Smith? Or two restaurants called Main Street Diner? Or two towns named Springfield?
Same situation when two people named John Smith want the same john-smith.com domain now. You may argue that in the current situation, if they are from different countries like US and Canada, they would obtain john-smith.us and john-smith.ca respectively. But in the proposed situation, they can also get john-smith-us and john-smith-ca
But who gets john-smith?
How did .catholic and .church get their own gTLDs?
Someone paid to register them.
All it takes for a TLD these days is a vaugely-legitimate use and about a million dollars[1]. This isn't hard for a large company or state actor to fund; Why would a mid-large religion not be able to?
[1] https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/resources/faqs#6
And a time machine. Applications were due in 2012. A new round is starting soon, but it's not clear if it's going to be continuous, or if it will be a single application period again.
Such a stupid system.
For another fun one: .weather is entirely owned by the weather channel...
Ask HN:
Is there even a good reason to have TLDs at this point?
The DNS is hierarchical. How would you replace TLDs?
namebase.io if you want a crypto backed one.
Seriously - how did that go down?
https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationde...
It would be helpful if you would explain why you think it is surprising or confusing or objectionable or whatever else inspired you to ask. Also helpful would be examples that you think are similar in some way, but that are not surprising, etc.
As is, your question is practically impossible to answer without just pointing you to the ICANN process.
like this: pay the consultants and lawyers, then ICANN. That's it.