A headline on the BBC news this morning states “Web Primed for domain name surge”. What is happening to generate this surge in domain name purchases? Are they giving them away for free? Are they going to make it compulsory for all businesses to have a domain name? No, the global internet body ICANN has decided that it is going to allow people to buy for £114,000 a domain suffix of their choosing. Personally, I cannot see this creating a surge in domain for web domains, if anything I can see this leading to making it harder to find the domain name you are looking, thereby resulting in more confusion and potentially more phishing attacks.
However properly used, this has some potential. It has the potential to keep the prices of domain names relatively stable as it means that there will be more choice i.e. even if you can’t get a .com domain name you can get a .tech domain name or .hosting domain or something similar.
If properly used and managed, it could result in a cleaner internet, with domain name owners properly categorising their sites e.g. .drink, .eat, .fun, .music etc
Or maybe it could just give the cyber squatters even more to go after. I think it is a natural stepping stone for domain names and I don’t believe it will drive a surge is domain names sales and I don’t think it will revolutionise the world wide web as we know it. I may be wrong, we will find out in 2012.
Let us know what you think,
Jacob
