Umm… if you’re “searching” for canon.com you seem to have totally misunderstood what searching is for. You DO know about that funny little URL window in your browser, don’t you?

With over 205 million domain names already registered (about 90 million of them dotcoms), trying to find a creative, unique, relevant and memorable address for less than a few million dollars, has become an almost impossible task.

Even if you’re lucky and do find something interesting (that’s too expensive?), just ask someone near to you how many websites they can actually recall. The chances are maybe a dozen (and that will include the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter). Things have to change to bring the Web back to a more level playing field.

Sites such as Dashworlds.com provide free domain names in the format “business-com”, “paris-fashion” and even “blue-cheese” (examples only). Totally outside the realm and control of ICANN, the public can create any domain or any TLD in any language, instantly and at no cost (and of course Dashcoms can’t collide with Dotcoms)

With users and members in over 90 countries worldwide, resolution is via an APP (with new ISP links to negate that need).

Not-so-long-ago, people would have thought the Internet itself to be a complete waste of time effort and money. After all why would you want to buy a hugely expensive computer, get an extra phone line, buy a modem, buy an OS, learn how to use it all….Just so you could read the news? All you had to do was walk down to the newsagent…or simply turn on your not-so-flatscreen Television.

Having just one Internet arena floating in infinite cyberspace is like saying you can visit anywhere in the USA as long as it’s on Route 66. So now, just as in the USA and everywhere else in the world, the Web has more than one option (without the $185,000 plus potentially millions of dollars in annual overheads).

Dawn, I’m not sure that people do specifically look for .net / .org and so on any more – my experience has been that people use .com or .com.au as a default. Which is interesting in itself as it reflects a trend of domain names becoming more centralised around .com, while ICANN’s plan is the ultimate decentralisation!

Andrew – that’s a really good point that I hadn’t thought of before. Advertisers might have to go with lines like “Find us at ___” instead, or as you say start using www. again.

Re the .telstra – I think it comes back to the issue about what value a gTLD really has to a company. I’m not sure there is an answer to that one yet, particularly with the Draft Applicant Guidebook yet to be finalised.

Can you imagine
.telstra domains for each of our customers, one per phone number!

Still, if theres a business case that can make it work, go for it.