GoDaddy CEO explains why new TLDs will be a good thing and hints at company’s pre-registration plans.
AZTechBeat has published a video interview (embedded below) with GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving about the forthcoming launch of new top level domain names.
In the interview, Irving describes what he sees as the problem with the existing limited number of TLD options.
“…there has been what I guess I’ll call a lot of domain name pollution that has happened in the marketplace,” he said. “It’s very difficult for anybody to find a domain that actually represents them.”
He said GoDaddy is an example. When Bob Parsons came up with the name for the company, he first tried BigDaddy and FatDaddy, but both of those domains were taken. He then settled on GoDaddy because it was available.
It also seems that Irving disclosed that the company will accept pre-registrations for individual domain names. GoDaddy already allows customers to express an interest in particular new top level domain names. But my interpretation of what he says in the video is that the company also plans to let people pre-register individual second level domain names that the company will then try to obtain when they become available.
Joseph Peterson says
I do see some potential benefits to the new gTLD program. However, I find these arguments puzzling.
Would Bob Parsons today — finding BigDaddy.com and FatDaddy.com registered — go with BigDaddy.fail or FatDaddy.club instead? Of course, not! Competing with the corresponding .COM is a dangerous way to pick a domain for a business.
Adding new gTLDs to the mix doesn’t make a name available. It’s STILL already registered as a .COM — just as it is now. So, at best, people may naively perceive the name to be available in some marginal extension — one of hundreds of such marginal extensions. Yet that’s the case already. .BIZ, .CO, .INFO, .MOBI, and many other extensions are typically open to registrants.
Dividing the name across multiple extensions is a very reduced kind of “availability” — a severely limited kind of ownership. How many businesses want a sliver of the name? Ideally, they’ll want to OWN the name in its entirety.
Yes, “Mike’s Bikes” can get Mikes.Bikes. But now they’ll have to worry about 2 domains rather than just 1. Relatively few businesses have names that match a new extension in such an obvious way. Suppose DomainNameWire.com were taken. Where to next? DomainNameWire.club? DomainNameWire.biz? DomainNameWire.web? DomainNameWire.lol? DomainNameWire.xyz? Choosing any one of those options begs the question, “Why not one of the others?” Indeed, why not a dozen or ALL of the others?
Identity ceases to be identity when it’s so ambiguous and prone to misremembering. An intelligent person, finding DomainNameWire.com taken and no new gTLD that’s an unmistakable fit, will begin looking for a new name idea available for .COM use. Otherwise, the new extensions don’t alleviate the need for a definitive extension. Instead they merely become extra requirements in addition to it.
A registrar, of course, benefits from domain registrations whether they’re smart choices for the registrants or not. So it’s easy to see why the CEO of GoDaddy would — sincerely, I’m sure — be excited about the massive new inventory of items to sell, coupled with the inevitable marketing push towards his company by all those new gTLD brands.
Really, I cannot imagine a GoDaddy.com choosing to start life in 2014 as BigDaddy.xyz … just because the first-choice string is found available in some dubious new extension. Yet that seems to be the implied argument in this video.
Mark says
Yes. I also have this concern. Most importantly, will Google view .web for example in the same light as .com ?
Let’s assume 2 sites have the same SEO and the same age. One is http://www.mysite.com and the other is http://www.mysite.web Which of these will be given the higher rating in Serps?
I think the answer is obvious!
Andrew Allemann says
Unless a particular TLD has a bad reputation, if the sites are the same, same age, etc., and the only thing different is .web vs .com, you can expect they’d do equally as well in the search engines.