Everyone knows what the .com, .org, .gov and .edu stand for on webpages. “.com” is the generic site domain name that may not be as trustworthy as .gov or .edu sites. It is also the most common domain name. Anyone who creates a site that is not related to an organization, government, or education has a .com domain name.
“.org” is an organization site, any organization can have one! This one is semi-trustworthy, it really depends on the organization (is it a good one, or a bad one?).
Then there is “.gov” for government. ONLY American government sites have the .gov domain name.
And “.edu” is for education. All of our schools have a .edu domain name. These signify higher educations and information sites and are very trustworthy.
Since Internet around the world uses these same domain names, we need to learn to share as html and web creators. In Japan, their .com domain names end with “.co/jp”. That seems to work. It separates Japan from American sites.
However, apparently everyone is upset that they cannot have “.gov”, because it is strictly for American use. Yes, that seems unfair. But the solution of ICANN, the group that runs domain names as a business, is to create more domain names!
Instead of everyone having “.gov” or “.com” at the end of their sites, now ICANN will start selling personalized domain names for about $185,000. That’s a lot of money!
So if Google wants a new domain name instead of “.com”, they can buy their own domain name for thousands of dollars to have a “.google” domain name.
Problems:
1. My key problem is that organization of sites will go down the drain. Now we won’t know what sites are trustworthy or not because the hierarchal system that our previous domain names provide will be gone!
2. Now we need to remember more to sites. We can’t just guess and assume that the site we want ends in “.com”. Now we actually need to remember what its site and domain name are!
3. Businesses are going to waste tons of money and possibly go bankrupt because they want to stay on top and have their own domain name. If you don’t have your own domain name your fucked! You won’t seem as powerful to online consumers with just a “.org”, “.gov” or “.edu”
4. Now if someone were to scam people out of thousands of dollars to buy a fancy domain name to scam and con more people, then consumers will just believe the site is true and powerful because it has the big fancy domain name!
It’s stupid, it’s a waste of money, and dear God now we will have billions of sites that we won’t know what exactly their function is.
Why can't everyone just have a ".gov/countryinitials"?
Problem #2 may initially seem like a minor issue, but I think it has the potential to really impede web traffic to sites that pay for new, non-traditional domain names.
ReplyDeleteIf given the choice between two sites to visit on a given topic and I know that one has the standard ".com" domain name, I'm much more likely to just use that one. Yes, perhaps the site with the custom domain name might have better information, but people want their information as FAST as they can possibly get it, and that requires an easy-to-remember web address.
Big companies may THINK they're giving themselves this huge advantage by dishing out thousands of dollars for a fancy, reputable sounding domain name, I but I think they may actually be doing themselves a diservice by making their sites harder for the general public to access. I might want to remember one or two sites with custom domain names, but there's no way I'm going to commit a whole list of custom domain names to memory. (I'll have to Google the sites each time I want to find them...which is a separate issue.)
Excellent points, Tanya & Amber. Of course, to play devils advocate here, it could be that adding a few more of these topline domain names will ADD to the credibility of particular sites and ADD rather than detract from the organization of the web. A ".nfl" domain, for instance, would tell you whether the info you were getting about your favorite pro football players was issued by the NFL itself or by a blogger living in his parent's basement.
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