Can ICANN Reverse the Law of Supply and Demand? - Fast Forward to 2000
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Fast forward to 2000. Since four of the seven top-level domains remained fairly restricted to their original definitions, ".com," ".net," and ".org" have become very popular, especially ".com." I won't rehash the various cybersquatting cases and the explosive popularity of the Internet that led to ICANN's decision to test out seven new domains. It was thought that these new top-level domains would help ease the then-perceived crowding of digital estate. Four new top-level domains (.biz, .info, .name, and .pro) were unsponsored, while three (.aero, .coop, and .museum) were sponsored. When a domain is sponsored, that means that there's an actual organization in charge of that domain, administering it and handing out names based on some kind of rules, because of an agreement it made with ICANN. For example, only museums can have a domain name with the .museum suffix, and the Museum Domain Management Association (MDMA) hands the names out to applicants who meet certain criteria.
So far, so good--except for one problem: most Web surfers felt perfectly happy with the domains they knew and there wasn't quite so much interest in either registering or visiting sites with the new suffixes. This wasn't really the fault of the sponsors; it was the curse of familiarity, as anyone who's accidentally typed ".com" instead of ".gov" when looking up the White House online will surely insist. Knowing this, many companies with strong brand names raised a stink about the move. They had invested a lot of money in having a Web presence, and they weren't going to have that jeopardized by cybersquatters grabbing popular names under the new top-level domains and then trying to sell the names at extortionist prices. Indeed, for a while there was some speculation that the only reason ICANN was encouraging the new top-level domains was to raise more money for itself.
Okay, so now it's 2004. We have seven original top-level domains, seven relatively new top-level domains, and now 10 more proposed top-level domains. Do we really need the new domains? Put it this way: how many of you have bookmarked Web sites ending in the seven new suffixes? I know I haven't. How many of you have registered, or know someone who has registered, a domain name with one of those seven new suffixes? Ditto. If we really were running out of digital estate, as ICANN claimed, wouldn't those new top-level domains be seeing lots of noticeable use by now?
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