World’s largest domain registrar will drop .com from its logo.
That iconic GoDaddy.com logo? It’s going to get a bit shorter.
Today at its Registry Days conference in Phoenix, Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving announced that the company is going to drop the .com ending from its logo.
That announcement was met with a round of applause by the audience, which is made up of companies that hope to chip away at the .com empire.
Irving said the branding change will occur over the next year.
Irving gave an analogy of telling his kids about records, and how amazed they were that it used to be how everyone listened to music. He imagines that his kids will tell a similar story about domain names to their kids. They’ll tell their kids about a time when every web site ended in .com — something that will be difficult for them to understand in a world of hundreds of gTLDs.
Ron says
Usually your logo represents your brand, the fact godaddy was a online company putting the .com was only a bonus, since it is an online household brand, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
DR.DOMAIN says
Either that…or they know people just visit .COM by default?
matt r says
But but but…how are people going to know were to find ur website without an extension? So everyone will not be putting on their extension? Even .whatever’s? This is going to be very very confusing. WTF?
gpmgroup says
Very few larger companies seem to use .com in their logo
http://www.unifiedmediallc.com/blog/2011/02/top-fortune-500-logos-deconstructed/
Amazon.com is the exception but then they run completely separate national sites at amazon.co.uk and amazon.de etc.
Even major players like domainnamewire.com which don’t feel the need to own or redirect other extensions drop the .com in their logos.
John Berryhill says
Bad choice. They dropped the better part of their name.
They should have kept the “.com” and dropped the “GoDaddy” part.
Andrew Allemann says
It’s true that most large companies don’t have .com on the end bc it’s implied. This is more symbolic than anything.
John O'Farrell says
Nice move by GoDaddy to move in any direction they wish….if the whole new gTLD thing does not work out (more likely “when” than “if”).
It seems that there are only three types of people interested in the new gTLDs. Those scared into doing it to protect their brand. Those looking to play with them (and have stacks and stacks of cash lying around). And lastly, those who stand to make a profit by supporting and consulting those scared into protecting their brand.
I can’t seem to help this thinking this is going the same route as all the other TLDs designed to “chip away at the .com empire” like areo, tel, mobi, info, pro, etc.
At least the arguments I hear in favor of the new gTLDs are the same as the ones I heard years ago supporting these lackluster TLDs.
I could be wrong but I am not placing any wagers on success for the new gTLDs.
John O’Farrell
Brad Mugford says
“It seems that there are only three types of people interested in the new gTLDs. Those scared into doing it to protect their brand. Those looking to play with them (and have stacks and stacks of cash lying around). And lastly, those who stand to make a profit by supporting and consulting those scared into protecting their brand.”
That pretty much sums it up.
Let’s also not forget ICANN who created this program for pure financial reasons.
Programs that are created without demand, that serve no major purpose, rarely succeed.
Brad
Ms Domainer says
*
Conversely, Brad, when .com came out, there was little demand for this new-fangled internet crap (LOL).
🙂
But I do agree that .com is king and that it will be very difficult for new generic gTLDs to catch on, let alone take over.
I don’t think it matters if GD has the .com TLD or not.
*
Ron says
@John
You are dead on!
Joe says
“It seems that there are only three types of people interested in the new gTLDs. Those scared into doing it to protect their brand. Those looking to play with them (and have stacks and stacks of cash lying around). And lastly, those who stand to make a profit by supporting and consulting those scared into protecting their brand.”
Amen to that.
ChuckWagen says
The REAL story is when they drop 4 more letters and become GoD.
Jason Thompson says
@ChuckWagon that would be a great April Fools joke. 🙂
Nic says
Any chance they could also drop the silly name, and dreadful logo, and awful “cars and girls” marketing?
All the things that drive me mad because they have worked so well.
Snoopy says
It is trash talk to appeal to new tld registries with the added bonus of annoying verisign. At the end of the day an Internet company only needs an extension in a logo if the extension is not the norm so it matters little for godaddy. It is strongly in go daddy’s interests to try and develop alternatives to verisign, that will never happen in a meaningful way.
Com Don Ron says
.com is just going to get bigger and bigger. No one will want the GTLD of any name without owning the .com. Godaddy dropping the .com is more evidence of this. What will always be their primary address? Godaddy.com . The values of the .coms are going to continue to go up.
Jeremy Leader says
Note also that GoDaddy has applied for the .godaddy TLD for their own use, so eventually you might be able to just use the url “http://godaddy/” to get to them. And until then, most browsers will append the .com for you if you forget it.
Josh says
Everything has a ceiling or flat line, even registrations of tld’s at some point in time have to fall or flat line.
So while I can’t blame them for venturing into new rev streams for the future I do not see this making much of an impact.
Essentially they are saying that if I see or think GD doesn’t need the .com than I don’t either. You would have to assume most of their customers or future customers are smart enough to put two and two together, like I said, can;t see it working lol
John Berryhill says
“Irving gave an analogy of telling his kids about records, and how amazed they were that it used to be how everyone listened to music.”
…or used the album covers to separate stems and seeds from marijuana. The kids were further amazed that it used to have stems and seeds.
Charles Mohr says
We have seen much change in the past ten years. Most of the activity were in the search engine wars and web code standardization. Domain name extensions will play a huge part in this next era as more changes will surely unfold.
We so far have seen Social Media sites out rank dot coms for exact name searches. We have also seen how content relevancy in post panda, were dot nets out rank their counterparts.
As more and more domain extensions become available and more content is published, Domain Extensions will become critical in how we perform searches.