If You Thought .XXX Was A Major Headache

[maxx68]

Great info everyone. Times are certainly changing...I'm just not sure if for the best.

[HunkyLuke]

So basically you're saying that the private company garnered enough funds from .xxx to put up the cash for all these others?? Should that be worrisome about eventual pricing?

Its not the same company putting up these new TLDs...well, perhaps they are sponsoring some of them like .sex, that would not surprise me. And I think Google and countries would not ban .black or .latino, that banning is a specific fear with .xxx which is only starting to come true with the UK and other country's mandatory internet filters, although those filters are more about blocking porn and not blocking .xxx, it just so happens that the easiest way to block a chunk of porn is to block the entire .xxx TLD.

My reading of it is that any company can apply for and run a TLD extension. I assume they can then sell domain names on it? But what would happen if that company went bust?

Yup, thats right. And I am 100% confident that there is terms in the contract between the private company and ICAAN to have provisions for companies going bust, not the least of which would be financial guarantees and holdbacks!

[Bec]

Regarding the price of registration of these TLDs, I'd venture to say that the owners of the TLDs will determine the prices themselves.

I think you're right, but gawd, that'll be a marketing nightmare for the registrars.

[dirtyratstudios]

I'd be concerned that I would buy a domain for $10 but then after a couple of years the company would push up the price to $50 or who knows what. Particularly if they weren't selling as many as they expected and got into financial trouble.

A bit like the service charges on apartments in the UK. Some owners are held to ransom by management companies.

That sort of price increase is much less likely to happen with long established TLDs such as .com.

[dirtyratstudios]

banning is a specific fear with .xxx which is only starting to come true with the UK and other country's mandatory internet filters

The half dozen major ISPs which dominate the UK market have signed up to this. But it seems that some other smaller companies will offer an unfiltered broadband as standard and not offer a filtered product. Should be interesting...

After it gets started I'd like to see stats for how many households ask for the porn filter to be turned off. I bet it will be a massive percentage LOL

[Evil Chris]

It occurs to me that movement in this direction may also open the door for more SEs to break in and give competition to Google. I mean, it only makes sense.
Google cannot stay on top forever, and if people aren't gettting the results they want, they will move on to something else. Of course their products will likely remain strong (gmail, etc.) but searching may well be going on elsewhere.

[Bec]

The top 5 search engines in order
Google 900,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors
Bing 165,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors
Yahoo 160,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors
Ask 125,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors
AOL 33,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors

Bing is still way below Google, and is only ahead of Yahoo by about 5 million. Anyone know how they are about showing Adult listings?

[dirtyratstudios]

Google cannot stay on top forever, and if people aren't gettting the results they want, they will move on to something else. Of course their products will likely remain strong (gmail, etc.) but searching may well be going on elsewhere.

I think the revelations about data being accessed by the NSA have permanently damaged a number of companies including Google, and certain technologies such as cloud services, permanently. Particularly as far as Europeans are concerned. I can see there will be a demand for other services.

On top of that, there has been extensive publicity about Google not paying adequate taxes in the UK, with them up in front of a parliamentary committee twice. There has been the scandal over their illegal collection of data via wifi from the Street View cars and apparently they failed to delete it when told to. Many people see them as a shifty company that can't be trusted. Their brand is being diminished by the day.