I’m still trying to understand .brand.
I’ve never understood the lure of a brand owning .brand. Yesterday Canon announced that it will launch .canon when new top level domain names are allowed. Why? I’d really like to understand everyone’s opinion on this, but let me first clear the air of common claims I hear.
If I own my .brand, I don’t need to register all of my products/services in .com. So if you’re Verizon, you won’t care anymore if someone owns VerizonFios.com, VerizonDSL.com, etc? That’s the logic a number of people espouse.
If top level domain names were freely registrable when domains first became popular, I could buy that argument. But instead we are programed to navigate based primarily on the second level domain name. Could this change? Yes, over the very long term. It will take more than just a few large brands promoting their .brand. Many years and many, many brands. Eventually the cost of registering a TLD will have to go down significantly in order for it to work. So why get your TLD now if you can wait until the typical web user catches up?
Until the typical web user understands it, .brand owners will need to alias all of their URLs to .com. If Canon runs a TV ad that says “go to www.canon”, how many people do you think will actually type in www.canon.com? For now, most people will. Eventually that will change. But lets say in 10 years 80% of people know to not type in .com at the end. It’s still a poor user experience for the 20% who still type in .com.
Aliasing/forwarding every second level domain to the top — such as usa.canon to usa.canon.com — will be a major yet necessary undertaking.
Owning .brand will eliminate phishing. Hmm. Most phishing I see is done at domain names completely unrelated to the brand’s name. So unless everyone who gets duped from those scams suddenly wakes up, I don’t see this helping phishing.
I want to stop promoting VeriSign’s brand. Getting past the fact that VeriSign doesn’t own the .com brand, I don’t think web users think of .com as a brand. They look at it like the @ sign in an email address. It’s just what goes at the end of a web address. When I see Nike.com, I think Nike, not .com.
And I have to ask, if this is such a concern then why do we see so many ads for “visit us on Facebook at Facebook.com/brand?”
It’s easier than .com. One of Canon’s reasons for launching .canon is:
“Canon hopes to globally integrate open communication policies that are intuitive and easier to remember compared with existing domain names such as “canon.com.â€
Sounds like Canon’s domain name consultants wrote that. I guess this means remembering to put .com is difficult to remember, because I don’t see another reason it would be easier to remember or more intuitive. Granted, Canon is an international brand and perhaps uses a number of country code top level domains. But if people are used to using those ccTLDs, it will be similar to the transition from .com to .brand — a long and winding road.
I’m also confused and have a genuine question on how the lack of a second level domain would work. Can you tell people to go to .canon? Can you have email addresses name@.canon? I suspect you’d need it to be name@usa.canon or some other second level since wildcarding is (likely) not permitted, and most software expects a second level domain. Again, expect to alias all of those email addresses to canon.com.
Incidentally, Canon ads today can say “go to Canon.com”. In the future they’ll need to say “go to www.canon” so that people understand it’s a URL. That actually takes longer to say than Canon.com.
I need to register .brand before someone else does. There are a lot of protections in the applicant guidebook to protect against this. No one other than Verizon is going to be able to get .verizon. If you have a generic name, such as .apple, or perhaps even .att, you might consider it. But many brands don’t fall into this category.
I can do something with my own TLD that I can’t do with .com. Please give an example. Really, I want to see some innovative way a brand owner could do something with .brand they can’t do with brand.com. I just haven’t heard of anything yet.
Look, I have nothing against a brand spending $500,000 to create .brand. The more, the merrier. I just don’t understand why anyone would do it during this coming round of new TLDs. If the idea ever takes off, it will be in future rounds when thousands of companies (everyone?) registers top level domain names at much lower prices.
That said, I predict a lot of brands will jump on the bandwagon. The cost is small potatoes in case they ever decide to use the TLD.
Josh says
There is one issue I take with this …
Unless your branding of yourself with this .brand is international and long running thus costing tens of millions upon millions upon millions only to see it die off after a short time… oops got a head of myself. The mentality of .com is too powerful to ver come and simply spending that marketing money on all the greatest names in your niche not to mention owning your name.com is sufficient. I would view this move ( .canon )as merely a stunt. If it ever comes to the point people want canon and think of .canon before canon.com… the world will have changed drastically.
Antony Van Couvering says
Let me try your argument in another context:
When everyone had an AOL address, everyone was so-and-so@aol.com. If you got a new email address with your own domain name, it was confusing to people who were used to typing in “aol.com” at the end of a username. If you got an email address with your own domain name, you still had to keep your AOL account and check it (redirection wasn’t possible). It was a very bad experience for the 20% of people who still typed “aol.com” at the end of an email address. Nobody noticed the “aol.com” at the end of an email address, so it wasn’t a branding issue. Ergo, AOL must be an even bigger behemoth than it was.
Maybe you’re right, Andrew. Maybe .brand or .anything are bad ideas that no-one will want. Maybe the iPad is a bad idea too and no-one will buy one. But many of your arguments against TLDs apply to a variety of Internet innovations that caught on just fine.
(The other straw-man arguments you advance — no defensive registrations, will get rid of phishing — I haven’t heard used, at least not as a primary argument.)
Your major arguments rest on a view of human nature and behavior that has been shown again and again to be false. That view says that once people get something into their head, it’s very hard to change it. That may be true of politics or religion, but when it comes to Internet behavior, there are innumerable entrenched technologies/conventions that just disappeared despite their overwhelming market advantage.
Examples: Everyone using AOL addresses; everyone using Netscape browsers; everyone using Eudora email; everyone using Yahoo! as their home page; everyone using Hotmail as their web mail; everyone using Network Solutions as their registrar; everyone using eBay to sell their stuff, etc. etc. That’s just for the Internet: what about the 8-track to cassette to CD to MP3 chain, each of which not only required a change from habit but also a pretty substantial investment.
There have been plenty of innovations that have been failures, and new gTLDs might be one of them. But to argue that people won’t try something new on the Internet is to deny the history of the past 20 years.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Antony – I think you’ve always advanced better arguments on this issue that many of your peers. In time, it’s possible that what you mention with AOL will happen. Perhaps I came to the web later than I thought; when I joined when there was AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, each with their own email addresses. But I think that was pretty early on.
I agree that people will try something new. I just think that brands are being sold on false promises by brand management companies (Incidentally, the same ones arguing against new TLDs as you have pointed out). But so far it’s kind of like “the emperor has new clothes” — a lot of your peers are saying that people who don’t understand the advantage of new TLDs “just don’t get it” instead of giving concrete examples.
In general, I’m fine with new TLDs coming to the web. I still have a number of reservations, but as long as some of those get resolved I’m not too worried.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Antony – I’d also add that we have some actual history in this case, with all of the other TLDs that have come out over the past decade.
Kevin says
In Canon’s case, there’s probably an early-mover marketing advantage in the novelty (stunt) value. Assuming there’s only a handful of .brands at the outset, the cost of launching a TLD could be quite reasonable for the column inches you receive.
Mark Fulton says
They probably spend $500,000 weekly on bagels for employees.
Canon has always been about innovation. Doing this is only natural for them.
They won’t be using http://www.canon, it will be something like US.canon, EU.canon, Contest.canon, Community.canon, printers.canon, etc.
Imagine knowing nothing about domain names or new TLDs and you see a legit commercial which says, “Visit us online at US.canon”
I think most people would be floored and would attempt to investigate the validity of this new address by trying it themselves (traffic) or asking others (buzz). Well worth another round of bagels.
Bo says
It will take a very long advertsing campaign to educate people. The average person never heard of .mobi or .info it will take a long time for people to understand there is no .com after canon.
Ken Schafer - OpenSRS says
I get how a marketer could use a .brand TLD to easily point to particular marketing pages (scanners.canon for example) and while those may look alien now I think the bet companies are taking is that newTLDs shake up people’s assumptions about what a domain is and looks like.
The thing I can’t quite get my head around is what Canon (or any other company using a .brand) would use as their default/generic home page.
Would it be http://www.canon? Would/could “.canon” all by itself resolve to their corporate home page (i.e. what they have at canon.com right now)?
On this I’m unclear.
Cheers,
Ken.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Ken – that’s one of my big questions, too. Technically second level domains can’t be “wildcarded”, at least for now. And what about email addresses? You can’t be ken@canon. Would have to be something like ken@mail.canon.
Antony Van Couvering says
Canon doesn’t have a “home page” even today. They have a variety of pages that serve different markets. The US home page for consumers, for instance, is usa.canon.com, while in Japan it’s web.canon.jp. Canon.com (without a third-level name) goes to their corporate page, a.k.a “Canon Global.”
This is typical for truly global companies (see for example DHL or Fedex), where there is no “one” page that works for every market. For these companies especially, .com already functions as stand-in ccTLD, a marker for “USA.”
It makes a lot of sense for Canon to end this confusion by putting everything under their brand umbrella.
Antony Van Couvering says
@Ken + @Andrew – there’s no reason you can’t be ken@canon, except that many email apps won’t resolve it. Technically there’s no issue with it. Remember that domain names as we are used to reading them leave off the last “dot,” which signifies the root level. In technical configuration files, the domain name of this site would be domainnamewire.com. <– notice the last dot. Similarly the email address would be routed as ken@canon. <– again, notice the final dot. It's a very uncommon form of email address, however, and email clients typically don't handle it well.
So something like ken@mail.canon is likely to be a convention until the apps catch up.
David J Castello says
@Antony:
Your posts are 99% of the reason that I write about these new TLDs. I have never met you and have heard you’re a pretty nice guy, but it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that you are on someone’s payroll and their frustration has long become your frustration. I find it impossible to believe that someone can keep fostering this kind of relentless propoganda without an intense ulterior motive.
Despite years of facts to the contrary, you keep insisting that the public is clamoring for these new TLDs. Why didn’t they work before? About they only logical argument you have left is that they weren’t the right TLDs. In other words, dotName, dotPro and dotTravel failed because the names sucked. However, dotNYC, dotMusic and dotFood will instantly motivate the masses. Please.
Let’s stop saying this has anything to do with innovation. This is not the iPad. This is a money grab and it’s perfectly fine with me. People have a right to make money, but let’s start calling it what it is.
Ken Schafer - OpenSRS says
It’s interesting that Canon is the example here because I’ve visited Canon sites many times in the past and I’ve ALWAYS started from either a Google search (if I needed a driver or something like that) or from canon.com (if I was looking for general product info).
I guess I’d be leery of using a .brand if I didn’t also use brand.com and that probably solves the problem in most cases.
BTW, I’m really excited that Canon stepped forward to get the snowball rolling down the hill. It will be fascinating watching how companies use this opportunity.
Cheers,
Ken.
John Berryhill says
If it makes sense for anyone, then I would have guessed one of the larger Japanese conglomerates might be interested in doing this sort of thing.
Take Yamaha, for example. You might be looking for anything from a piano to a speedboat. Or Mitsubishi – Tuna or a forklift truck? From their own FAQ:
“01.Q
Is Mitsubishi a single company?
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01.A
No. “Mitsubishi” is a community that consists of a multitude of independent companies. The names of most – but not all – of those companies contain the word “Mitsubishi.” And many of the companies use the three-diamond Mitsubishi mark. But none calls itself simply “Mitsubishi.””
Antony Van Couvering says
@David – You insist that I’m on someone’s payroll. I am — mine.
Pardon me for not being convinced by repetition of the mantra “com is king.” There are many successful non-.com TLDs, in both the ccTLD and gTLD spaces. Some of them lack type-in traffic, but there is more to a TLD than type-in traffic. For instance, .edu is highly prized from an SEO perspective, and I suspect .tel will acquire that same value. Not everyone considers domain names, and especially not TLDs, from a domainer perspective.
I am not the only one who believes that new gTLDs will bring innovation; there are legions of like-minded people from all parts of the industry, including registrars, registries, governments, non-commercial users, and even (as we say today with Canon’s announcement) brands. While this shows that my ideas aren’t great (great ideas are lonely), isn’t it possible that all these people are not entirely wrong?
You are very sure of what will happen. I am not so sure, but I do know that the domain name ecosystem, from a domainer perspective, is increasingly fragile. Consider:
1. Shrinking (rapidly-shrinking?) payouts from Adsense-type ads and parked pages, reducing revenue from non-developed sites.
2. With all the lobbying and bad publicity about cybersquatting (which I agree is exaggerated) Google may at any time decide that the money is not worth the trouble, and pull its Adsense for Domains program or ban parked pages altogether.
3. Moves to establish some kind of Whois verification, likely to succeed, which will push up the cost of domains and cause discomfort for those who prefer shadows.
4. Strong moves by ICANN to insist on security improvements in ccTLDs, likely to push up the costs in the ccTLD space.
5. The implosion of ICA and the inability of domainers to enunciate any kind of coherent group position, let alone lobby for it.
6. Legal moves afoot in Utah (with national implications), which may force registries and registrars impose expensive trademark checking mechanisms.
7. European courts charging damages to Sedo for a client’s infringing domain name, providing Sedo with a very strong incentive to police domain names in their system — again driving up prices.
8. A gTLD regulatory framework that exists at the whim of the ICANN Board, and pressure to change existing registry agreements to bring them into line with new gTLD agreements.
In this environment of pressure and uncertainty about the domain economic and legal ecosystem, new gTLDs have an excellent chance of succeeding if they can avoid the pitfalls of the earlier TLDs. Given the facts listed above, few gTLD applicants are planning to depend on large numbers of speculative registrations. In fact, few gTLD applicants — none that I’ve talked to — even wants to be like .com. They would like the numbers, of course, but not the chaos and increased regulatory scrutiny. New gTLDs applicants are ambivalent (at best) about large numbers of domainer-like registrations: parked pages, good names undeveloped, etc. Many feel that the short-term revenue boost is outweighed by the damage to their brand.
My best guess is that some new gTLDs will fail, and others will succeed. Those that build a diverse customer base, and whose second-level names are developed into web sites that people will bookmark and return to again and again, will do well. How well, how quickly? I have no idea, and respectfully neither do you. It will depend on their strategy, resources, and execution.
You seem sure that all new gTLDs will fail. That’s fine, but if you’re so sure, why do you bother with them (or me) at all?
michael says
The only real question is whether or not ICANN will use the money it makes from this scam to eliminate the charge they currently put on each dot com. If they promise to do that, I am all for the scam. If they don’t, I am against the scam.
David J Castello says
@Antony
1) On a business level, I’m in favor of the new gTLDs because I believe they will be a boon for our single word Generics like Rate.com and Geodmains like Nashville.com.
2) I would also like to see the process as restricted and expensive as possible. You and I both know how easily these new TLDs can (and will) be abused and if you really believe dotFood will make millions it shouldn’t be a problem.
3) I used to keep my mouth shut about stuff like this (easier to make friends). What changed it all? DotMobi. When my brother and I became known in the industry as the Castello Brothers (thank you, Ron Jackson) we were inundated with people from all over the world asking us for advice. A young guy came up to me in early 2007 and told me he was going to invest his college fund in dotMobi and asked if I thought it was a good idea. In my heart, I thought anything outside of dotCom was risky, but I didn’t want to make waves and I directed him to some people who (I thought) knew more about dotMobi. To make a long story short he listened to them, got stars in his eyes, bought the farm and lost his ass. Play time over.
4) Very few of the TLDS outside of the legacy and ccTLDs have done well. In fact, I don’t believe that ccTLDs should ever be part of the new gTLD debate and I find it amusing that proponents of the new gTLDs always steer clear of discussing the vast majority of non-legacy and non-ccTLDs that have failed even though they have most in common with the names you propose.
5) Type-in traffic is not the main reason why we have a dotCom portfolio. The #1 reason is that the real power of an Internet brand is how easily the public can remember your name (which is what branding is all about). And getting them to remember anything different to the right of the dot is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (which shows the power of Nationalism in the success of some ccTLDs).
6) Will the gTLDs succeed? Depends on your definition of success. ICANN will do well. You and Jothan will do well. However, my definition of success is not the number of names sold, but the percentage of names actually developed and I believe it will be quite low.
Duane says
Google and other searchengines will love new .brand gTLD’s. It makes the searchengines life much more easy.
Let’s not forget when looking for a service or product on google? Do you find a brand like BMW,VW or Mercedes on page 1 when searching for “car” , “new car” or “used cars”?
Searchengines earn money from advertisers booking keywords. They will make sure they don’t loose advertisers ( top 500 INC .Brands)
I could write much more about this subject, but I honestly think we should all just watch these .brand names get punished.
I am pretty sure it will be in every way, a big kick in the ass.
.Brands for generic keyword search will definantly be found somwhere on google page placement 100 000 000. Google will make sure to keep making billions of dollars.
Most company’s just dont understand how this system “The Internet” functions.
Every day company’s buy “keyword” clicks to be found on the frontpage of a searchengine. Why? Because people use generic “keywords” and not .brands
The best “Advertisement agencies” are not going to tell there client’s ( INC 500) to buy generic keyword domains and everybody here know’s why.
.Brand gTLD’s are just luxury and great for a company’s ego.
Ms Domainer says
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I believe that the branded gTLDs will do just fine and web surfers will catch on pretty quickly. There will be no sunrise, no landrush, etc. because companies will set up their brand TLDs for company use only and for promotional purposes. To most major corporations, $200,000 is chicken feed–Bagel money, as one comment said.
However, it’s going to get dicey with generics. It’s quite one thing to own cars.com, but quite another with .cars because the potential to corner the market on a generic is just too great and may end up breaking all kinds of antitrust laws. Who decides who gets .cars? Is that decision based on “best use” or “deepest pocket”? I fear that “deepest pocket” will win the day. We could still see this with .tel (Disclaimer: I am a .tel fan) or .travel? What if one of the major mobile companies buys .tel out, or a major travel agency buys out .travel? Will these companies then corner the market, and, perhaps, claim the generic terms themselves as their own?
Also, look at the nasty fight among potential buyers of the .food TLD. I think that is just the beginning of some nasty court battles.
I’m not a fan or hater of new TLDs. I think .tel makes sense and .travel seems a tad too long. But the market will decide the success of any new TLD.
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Andrew Allemann says
@ Ms Domainer – technically who would get .cars is spelled out in the applicant guidebook. Mostly likely it would be auctioned. There’s a points system for applications.
Unfortunately, the process has a stupid sidetrack for “community” applicants.
gpmgroup says
@Andrew re Ms Domainer
People clearly expect names to right to represent a future super league otherwise their wouldn’t be any applications.
Trademark law doesn’t allow any one entity to control such branding advantage for generics. If you tried to trademark hotels or cars you would be turned away because it would afford branding advantage to a single entity over a generic term.
So how exactly can ICANN even begin to consider allowing auctions of the same same terms?
Auctions which will in effect grant a private monopoly in perpetuity.
Roger says
One opportunity I see for new gTLDs is a zero variable cost registration allowing some web hosts to offer 2nd level domains for free. The domain reg fee might be the biggest cost of a small business website when you think of these operations in scale. These customers have to settle for 3rd level domain names now to avoid that cost.
The new gTLD would need to be more appealing than a 3rd level domain though. I think .godaddy might be too long but wouldn’t Bob Parsons love for that to become a popular address! He might even pay (give discounts on hosting, free hosting) to get sites to use it.
Jim Igger says
Not sure if that’s a good idea, I think it would be very confusing for visitors if companies would start their own TLDs…just image how google results would look, imagine something like: support.us.canon
Looks a little weird…
Freddy says
There are a lot of protections in the applicant guidebook to protect against this. No one other than Verizon is going to be able to get .Verizon. If you have a generic name, …