Here's the The Lowdown
from DN Journal,
updated daily
to
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The Lowdown is
compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron
Jackson.
Consultant
Says New gTLDs Will Banish .Com to the Less
Professional, Mom-and-Pop Segment of the Web
I was interviewed Sundayby
Las Vegas based reporter Steve Friess
for an article
that appeared on AOLNews.com today about
a local battle over a proposed new .Vegas
gTLD. This would be one of the unlimited number
of new TLDs ICANN plans to roll out
within the next year or two.
As
you may have heard at least two competing
entities plan to go after a .Vegas extension.
One is backed by the city of Las Vegas and the
other by Clark County who has
jurisdiction over the Las Vegas Strip. If you
are interested in the wrangling over .Vegas, you
can read Friess's
account of the situation.
What
I found more interesting in my
conversation with Steve was a quote he relayed
to me from a Chicago attorney named
Paul
McGrady
who accepts consulting fees from people who
are considering plunking down as much as
$500,000 in an effort to land a new gTLD and
get it into operation. I was incredulous
when Friess told me McGrady said, "Some day
people will look upon .com as the less
professional, mom-and-pop segmentof the
Web where only small businesses and amateurs
dwell." I have to admit I almost fell out
of my chair laughing when I heard that.
Granted,
we have all become pretty much accustomed to a lot
of unsubstantiated claims from both sides
of the new gTLD debate (with the viewpoints
expressed almost always directly related to the financial
interests of the person making the claim).
Even so, I am dumbfounded that anyone could
be so uninformed and lacking in common sense as to
really believe that the world's
corporations are going to discard their .com
addresses for new gTLDs that no one has ever
heard and in most cases never will. No entity on
earth has the marketing budget to equal the
billions upon billions of dollars that have
been spent advertising .com domains and making
.com synonymous with the Internet (before anyone
brands me as a .com fanatic you should know that I
personally own more domains in other extensions -
including previous new gTLDS - than I do in .com,
but that doesn't change the reality of .com's
dominance on the Internet).
A handful of
new gTLDS may carve out a niche for
themselves but this is the first time I've
heard anyone suggest that people
(especially people they are collecting
money from for their new gTLD investment
advice) can expect to see new gTLDs send
.com into obscurity. What could such
an assertion possibly be based on? Certainly
not history. New gTLDs are nothing new
and last time I looked previous ones like .info,
.biz and .mobi don't appear
likely to send .com to the dustbin any
time soon.
Now, there is
nothing wrong with promoting a business
idea but when, as a professional, you
start leading potential investors who rely
on (and pay you for) your
"expertise" down a
primrose path
like this, that is going over the line
in my opinion. As I told Friess (in
commentary that appears in his
article following the McGrady
quote), anyone who would make such an
utterly baseless, absurd assertion would
have zero credibility in my eyes
and I could never believe another word
that comes out of their mouth. I
appreciate the thoughtful cases people are
making on both sides of the new
gTLD debate but please, let's leave
Fantasyland toDisney World.
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