TechStuff Looks at Generic Top Level Domains

I felt like it. Actually, what we really need is little t l D. Okay, it's different than TLC tender loving decapitation. That doesn't sound good at all, Chris, I'm not on board. No, we're talking about top level domain. You know, how stuff works dot Com for example, dot com is a top level domain, and how stuff works would be the next level down right. Yeah, it's it's

a little weird. Yeah, it's a little weird the way it's laid out, but it's it's how the Internet is structured so that information gets to where it needs to be. A top level domain is that extension at the end of a U R L or email address that tells you where in general that particular site falls where it belongs. And uh, it's the top level domain is something that's overseen by the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers. I can remember what their acronymics. Yes, it's I can exactly.

It's a private sector, nonprofit corporation that was created in and it is in charge of guarding those names and giving them out and uh and just sort of being the rule keepers so that, um, the various uh organizations and entities that create eight addresses have followed the basic rules so that the Internet works. Without rules, the Internet

wouldn't work. Yeah, that's that's something to remember. Um. If everybody were able to uh name a website whatever they wanted to with and there weren't any kind of authority uh limiting what you could do, there'd be fights all the time over uh domain names and things like that. And UM, not everyone may be necessarily familiar with the way the Internet works. We should probably do a quick

recap of the domain name system. Um. Every every Internet site has a numeric address literally made up of numbers. We actually just switched from i p V four to i p V six and in i p being Internet protocol and um uh, you know, without getting into a lot of detail, it's a series of numbers separated by dots.

There are rules on on how many how many numbers in between and what those values can be, and how many space sections of dots in between the dots there are and basically it uh, this is done so that everything has that is on the internet has a unique address that cannot be duplicated. Um. Of course that has

to be assigned. But if we were trying to remember the numbers for our favorite websites, um, I don't think we would be enjoying the web as we do today because most of us would have problems navigating to those things because you know, humans in general are not very good at remembering strings of numbers. Yeah, and now that we've gone to I p V six, basically there are more numbers in a sequence to make room for all

the websites. So we really be having trouble now because we've been you know, it was I don't know, one fifty three dot something. So and you know, before before we get too much listener mail, I should point out that I p V four to I p V six switch over is still something that's in progress. Well, yes, but it's started. Yes, it has started. There are actual sections of the Internet that have made that transition, and I have yet to hear anyone screaming about it. So

that's good. Um, you know, because sometimes when you change

to a new tech it doesn't work as advertised. So anyway, the domain names are our words that correspond to these numeric addresses, and you have these domain name servers that are essentially enormous databases that map the the words to the numbers, so that when you type in something like www dot how stuff works dot com, it will go to this domain name server that will then look up its database, try to see if there is a an entry for how stuff works dot com and then find

the corresponding numeric address, send the the site that lives at that address to your browser, and then you get to see the web page. Yes, um and uh. For a long time, we have been limited in the number of top level domains that we had available to us, and they were they were structured in very um if you think about it, they were structured in a very uh sophisticated way. It was originally intended to indicate what kind of organization you had, So dot com was for commerce.

Dot net was intended at one point for Internet service providers. E d U was education, GO o V was government agencies. You had m I L which was military, and o ORG which was organizations that did not fall under commerce. Yeah, not nonprofits basically, and uh yeah, so seven generic top level domains were created in the nineteen eighties and uh then after a few years they began to add a few more to those, including dot b I Z, dot I n f O so info, dot in a m

a name, dot p r O UHMBI. There were also a dot museum, dot kope, dot arrow uh. And then there were also country specific top level domains that would be put at the end of an address, so you might get dot d E or dot MX or dot JP and that's uh how some of the domains, some of some of the businesses that use other countries domains aren't located in that country. They were being very creative

with that what they did. A lot of television UH providers were excited that the very very small nation of Tuvalu was willing to let people share its dot TV domain. And I do believe they charged handsomely for the privilege. And that's The thing is that these these countries for

those country codes become essentially registrars for those domains. So if you wanted to have a domain that ended in that two letter extension, then you could negotiate with some agency within that government to try and get a domain name that falls under that category. Uh. For example, Delicious at one point was not delicious dot com. It was dot us domain and they had split up and they made the directory h d E L D E L

dot I c I O dot us. So they registered when they registered their domain it was we want I c I O dot us. So for a long time, though, you were pretty you had a lot of constraints over what your top level domain could be. Yeah, at one point, if you were a for profit you could not get a dot org. It just they wouldn't sell it to you. Uh. Gradually those restrictions started to loosen up a bit, but even so, we had just a few over twenty top level domains that you could use that we're not country

specific codes. UM, so that was it. But then I CAN ended up having a discussion about opening up the possibility of having new generic top level domain pans UH pop up, and that they wouldn't necessarily introduce new ones that people could use, where companies could use whatever. Uh. They were going to allow entities to pitch their own top level domains. And these top level domains could take pretty much any type of form, and some of them get pretty darn creative. Now it's there is a rhyme

and reason to this. Uh. Now the first the first thing is the idea of, well, this way you could have a very specific address for your business or your industry, whatever it is, UH that does not have to conform to these other older standards. So you might have something that really transcends the dot com Like it doesn't make sense to have dot com at the end of it because it's bigger than commerce or it or it overlaps other other categories besides common. So that's to give you

a lot more freedom. In order to maintain some control over this process, there were some pretty tough restrictions put in place, chief among them a monetary restriction. Yes, so, Chris, do you happen to know how much money it would cost if I wanted to go out and UH and and pitch you know, put forth dot Jonathan as a

new top level domain. If I wanted to do that, so that I owned dot jonathan and anyone who wanted to have an address that ended with dot Jonathan would have to come to me and I would act as registrar and they would have to pay me money to use it. How much money would I have to pay as an evaluation fee the lo low price of but wait, don't order yet now. Actually I'm thinking it would be more like I don't know one hundred eighty five thousand dollars to upply lie for a new top level domain.

And now this is why I haven't done it. There's there's also on top of that an annual fee to maintain that top level domain. That annual fee is twenty five thousand dollars. So you if you wanted to apply for this top level domain, you had to be able to fork over a hundred and eighty five grand Uh.

In fact, you had to put down a five thousand dollar deposit at the time that you request an application slot, and then you would have to pay the remaining one thousand when you were submitting the full application or for your application to be complete. Yes, and then uh, this particular process was just recently ended. We're recording this podcast on June, and it was just this week that this process closed out because it was open for essentially the

first half of Yes. Yes, And there are one thousand new t l d s proposed, proposed, not approved. The approval process can last between nine and twenty months, that's what Icon has UH projected, So it'll be a while before these go into play, and not all of them will. In fact, some of them cannot because you have multiple entities bidding on the same top level domain name and you cannot have multiple owners. Now, if if a company buys this top level domain, essentially what it means is

that company becomes or entity person. It could be an individual, it doesn't have to be a company, but means that whoever that that administrator is, they have exclusive access to that top level domain that they can then choose to either keep all to themselves or they could create a business where they become a registrar. And other entities that want an a an address that ends with that top level domain could pay money to get a domain name.

So uh, just because a company goes after one of these domain names does not necessarily mean that they intend to use it exclusively. They may not even want to use it at all. They may just want to keep it to themselves so that no one else can use it. Yeah, this is an interesting point that you make, because that's one of those things for that that sort of be Devil's companies. UM. Because when and this is why I've been seeing it as a land grab described as a

land grab in the media. UM is because when a company, uh, you know, let's say there's a new top level domain, generic generic top level domain, UM, a company is going to want to register its name at that top level

domain as quickly as possible to protect its branding. Basically, we have our name at dot com, dot net, dot org, you know, as many of the regular domains as it can, because if somebody else got our product name dot you know, dot net or dot biz, um, they could post disparaging things about us, or they could pose as US and mislead consumers or visitors and thus misrepresent another person. For example, let's say Apple is a great example, so Apple dot com.

Apple has spent a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort in establishing its brand, and it's a very recognizable brand, it's very valuable brand, and they want to protect that brand so you if you were to go out and try and get Apple dot biz hoping that you could perhaps piggyback on Apple's popularity, and you are selling something else, maybe you're maybe you are a third party and you're trying to sell more Apple products, or maybe you are um selling things that are related

to Apple but are not directly from Apple, then you could be essentially trying to trade in on Apple's popularity

by doing this. And so some companies are going to take the uh, the steps to protect themselves from this and purchase up those those domains so that this doesn't become a problem, because the issue these companies have is that if some third party goes in scoops up that name and starts to use it in a way that is not aligned with the actual companies philosophy and motto and all that, it could end up reflecting badly on that company, even though they're not the ones in charge

of that domain. So, for example, if I've got a business and and I'm running my business as ethically as I possibly can, and then christicides he wants to start up a business use a similar domain name to mine, and he is not using those same ethical standards. People who go to Christ's site could in fact associate their experience with my company, even though I'm not the one at fault. So that's why a lot of these companies will buy up these domain names so that they can

prevent that from happening. Well, opening up this new top level domain, this generic top level domain ability means that you've got companies saying, well, great, now we should go ahead and go ahead and purchase dot company name so that we can make sure no one does that to us. Now, some companies not as concerned about that. They don't really it's not as imperative to them. But there are a few that have done this, Apple being one of them.

Apple has applied for dot apple uh, which you know, I mean that's Apple's a company with a huge target on it, so you can understand that. Another argument I've heard is how how relevant is this going to be? Because people are so used to going to dot COM's and dot nets, plus so many people don't bother typing in u r L s at all. They're finding their stuff either through social networks or through search, where the u r L is not nearly as important as the

page title. So does it really matter? Well, that's a good question, and and and some of those it's it's um. If you're interested, you can find a list of all these domains and they're actually kind of funny. Um yeah, I've got I've got some that I wanted to talk about. Okay, all right, Um, And this is also a time when the some of the top level domains are not using um, the alphabet as we know it. There are ones that

are using other alphabets as well. Seeing you know, some of the top level domains are in Arabic, and I believe there are some in Cyrillic. Um, so they have other yeah, kanji, So they're non Roman characters in the up level domains now for the first time. UM, so that's going that's probably going to help in countries that in which English is not the predominant language, I would assume.

So that's one thing, their own characters, but um, they're There are companies like Apple, Amazon, Google who have all applied for their dot names, which makes sense to me. But there are other ones that are longer than that, considerably longer than that. A couple of the financial uh institutions, big big big banks have applied for their names and it's the entire name, and I'm going, really, are people gonna,

you know, American Expressed in it too? They do dot American Express, Dot American Express and dot MX, So there there you go. Would you go to American Express dot American Express. But see, I don't know. It could also be you could also use these top level domains for internal reasons, Like you could use them for internal pages. You could use the for email addressestra nets email addresses. You would necessarily have to be just the website. So

let's say we had Discovery. Not that that's on I don't think that's on the list, but let's say that Dot Discovery we're on there, then we could have it where you know, our address might my address might be Jonathan Strickland at how Stuff Works dot Discovery, which you know, that could make sense, you could, I could, I could see that as being um an application. But uh yeah. In other cases, you just think, what are these guys thinking? And and it may be that they're protecting themselves, it

may be that they're thinking forward. Google applied for one hundred and one of these domains. Yep. They are the number one spender of a whole lot of money. I mean number one attempt at registering. Yeah, that's a lot of money dollars per pop, and they did a hundred and one of them. Here here's a list of some of the ones Google applied for. Just it's it's not a complete list. It's just a partial list. Android app

app by the way, it was really popular. I think eleven different entities all applied for app, Baby, Blog, Chrome, Cloud Corp, Docs, Drive, Earth, Family, Game, Gmail, Goo, Google. That's a Google without the Google, hang Out, Live, Love, Male, Meme, Mom, movie, music, Amazons also after that one, by the way, Page Play, search, Talk, tech Tube, Web, Wow you, YouTube, and zip. All right, Yeah,

some of those make obvious sense. Their names of Google products brothers make obvious sense because they're things that Google is very much interested, very much in search and app. Um, so I said there's there were there were Um, let me say, I'm looking up. Oh, I'm sorry. There were not eleven companies going after or eleven entities going after app.

There were thirteen. I think out of all the ones I looked at, App was the one that had been the largest number of entities bidding for that top level domain. By the way, for app, three of those uh, those applications came from companies called dot app LLC Limited Liability Companies what ll C stands for. There there are several companies that were created for the purposes of registering, which

is interesting. It's interesting to me that three companies called dot app ll C all bid for it, all three reps listed, because it does. The document that has this lists the person who requested it and their email address, all three reps, and only are they different people, but the email addresses are different domains. Yep. So you've got three companies that have the same name from three apparently

different entities, all going for app. And you may wonder, well, how does I can decide if if multiple entities all bid for the same top level domain, how does I can decide who gets it? Technically it's a first come, first serve. Wow, But yeah, if now, it's if one of the users has already completed the process before another party has applied, the top level domain goes to the first person for the first entity that's served. So that means that if Google applied for music and completed that

application before Amazon applies, it goes to Google. But if two entities or more apply for the same top level domain during the application process, and and none of those entities has completed the process before anyone else got involved. Then there's a resolution process where they I can assigns points to each applicant in four different categories, and then whichever applicant has the most points wins, and if there's

a tie in points, there's an auction. I figured there'd be an arm wrestling contest that I think comes down if that everyone just bids the same amount of money and no one agrees to go higher, and then it comes into thunderdome. Actually, I don't think it's uh. I think two companies enter, one company leads UH. I have I have a list of some of the what I thought were interesting domain names that were proposed. Not again,

this is just a partial list. We're talking about over like almost two thousand domains top level domains were proposed. I only have a small section of those, and some of them are just, um, you know, confirmation of companies that you would expect to be in that list. Do you want to hear some of them? Sure? Okay, there's dot a A that's the American Automobile Associations that triple a uh A ARP so for the retired persons in the world. That actually was again registered by a ARP.

Because here's another thing, I've got one in here that uh is a definite, definite flag I think because you don't have to be the company to register the top level domain. That gets a little tricky. Um, that's why some of these companies are registering at ABC American Broadcasting Company. Both accountant and accountants was applied for so dot accountant

or dot accountants, so air Force, Army, and Navy. All three were pitched by a company called United T l D Hold Co Limited, which is not a company commissioned by the military. Rather, it is a subsidiary of Demand Media, which is the company that runs e how So you have that there are those who would call e how All a content farm that they just generate lots and lots of content. That's something that people have said about

e heal. So there are some people who are worried about the fact that the subsidiary of Demand Media has purchased or is trying to purchase these top level domains, Like what could they be doing with dot air Force, dot Army, dot Navy. Yeah, now, and so that's interesting, Well, the American military uses the dot mill top level domain for its sites. UM. So if it's not doctor, you know, there might be a civilian department, military related department that

might be at dot gov. But the Army United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Can I trip over that some more UM would be at dot mill um. Now it may be that maybe that United tld Hold Co Limited is just going to act as a registrar, and because that is a legitimate way of making money, you could you gonna do anything whether they're going to sell sell the domains to people UM or they could have plans to do something with it. We honestly don't know. Uh.

Anti virus is one of them. That was from Symantec, so that's not a surprise. Art there were ten different applicants for a r t BBC, so that is of course the British Broadcasting Company. There's a blog that was a popular one. Nine different companies applied for that book also had nine applicants, including Amazon. Not no surprise there, uh cern C E r N and it was in fact Cern that applied for that design another popular one.

Eight different applicants for that go Daddy, HBO, IBM I E E E or as I always like to call it a Yeah, they've they've actually gone to calling themselves I E E E instead of the you know, the longer full name of their organization. Uh. Inc so I n C, not I n K I n C had eleven different applicants intel um one of my favorites. Irish. Also another interesting one. Dot is Stanbul, not Constantinople. Now

every Gallon Constantinople lives in a Stanbul, not Constantinople. So if you have a dating Constantinople, she'll be waiting at a stan bowl or dot is Stanbul. Perhaps catch up? Can you guess who who applied for ketchup? My first guests were behind there you go, good guess. Konami LLC had nine applicants. But if you want it, never mind, it's dot up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right. Uh,

it's the it's the dot Konami code. UM. Panasonic PlayStation Sony Restaurant was a very popular one shop head nine applicants, so that was also very popular. So these these are examples of some of the new top level domains that we may see in nine to twenty months from the publish the publication of this podcast. UM, there's no telling which ones I can will will approve versus deny. I don't even really know what their full criteria are for

approving versus denying a particular top level domain. You know, I honestly don't know, Like is there I just didn't lack the look on his face denied. I don't know. I mean, that's how it would be if I ran the organization. But I would argue that they're probably a little more level headed than I am. Speak. Speaking of which, do you did anyone file for dot evil? That's a good question. I didn't look. Hang on, you can go

talk amongst yourselves. Uh yeah, Um, of course some of the others that to you know, dot dot lall um dot and we're kind of interesting, Dot fail. I like dot O O O and uh, you know, there's some some really interesting choices, you know with dot l O L especially and uh. People were expecting dot w t F and dot sucks, although there weren't as many as you might have thought applying for those. So more than one, but two different companies applied for l O L. Yes.

One of them was Unit Registry Corporation, which is you would probably imagine some sort of registrar company holding company. The other is a holding company called Charleston Road Registry, Incorporated, which is the holding company for Google. So Google is interested in l O L Yes, all right, you were asking about Evil, right, yeah, Dot Evil. Let me check here. I've got the whole list in front of me here. But yeah, so it's it's interesting and a couple of

notable non applicants. Uh, neither Facebook nor Twitter applied for dot Facebook or Dot Twitter. Evil is not on the list. I think that's an opportunity for Dr Horrible yeah or Dr Evil. True true, maybe they'll both fight it out. Oddly enough, sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads was applied for. That's a lie, yes, but still Persian Gulf. That was one Patagonia. Yeah, well I assume from the the clothing company Patagonia, not you know, from yes, Patagonia Incorporated.

You know. What's what's also kind of um made from recycled domain name. What's kind of interesting here is, like I said, if you go to I can you can actually look at the list of all the applied for strings. It's it's fun and let's see what people sent for. Yeah, the list the primary contact and their email address is funny. And I can only mentioned the emails that these people are going to get from now on. I mean, I'm like, I'm looking at some of these, I'm just like, ah, all,

that poor person is just gonna get flooded with email. Well, it'll be interesting to see which ones of these get approved and which don't. UM. And it will also be

kind of fun to see how this affects things. I don't think it's going to cause a lot of confusion in the long run, um, but you know, and I do think it will open things up for organizations in UM countries where they don't use the Roman alphabet significantly, especially you know, Arabic and Kanji, um, you know, and and and countries that use a significantly different alphabet will give them uh more flexibility in uh you know, using

and using the internet there. UM. But yeah, I don't I don't know in the western in world that it's going to cause that much of a sensation. Um, you know, places that are only available at their dot entities name dot apples. UM. I just don't know. Yeah, I don't

know either. It'll be interesting to see how it how it develops, and what the what the reaction is, I mean, whether or not we even see these companies migrate them over into these top level domains remains to be seen, and it could be that it will happen without any hitches and that you know, companies just make that migration, or it may turn out that we have become so used to the way that the Internet is organized now that no one really makes that move because they might

see a huge drop up. I would imagine that if they do migrate, they don't really just migrate, they copy, because it would be you know, to to move away from the established top level domains would probably mean seeing a huge drop off in visitors. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds. Well. I think that was a good discussion about the topic. If you guys have any suggestions for topics we should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, let us know. Send us an email.

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