How The Arrival Of gTLDs Could Shape The Future	2.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Anand Srinivasan April 29, 2015

Ever since the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened up the internet to new generic TLDs, there has been a spate of new registrations from big corporations like Google and Amazon. The rationale behind some registrations is quite obvious. For instance, Google owns the rights to the .app TLD. As you can expect, .app is used to target the smartphone app markets. Similarly the TLD .cancerresearch is owned by the Australian Cancer Research Foundation. Why a not-for-profit foundation would spend thousands of dollars into acquiring a TLD is a question for another day though.

Anyway, what does the arrival of these new generic TLDs mean for the web domain industry? Some experts have voiced their opinion that the sheer number of new TLDs has caused a drastic tilt in the demand-supply gap. Why would a hypothetical XYZ Corporation spend thousands of dollars in acquiring XYZ.com if it can get XYZ.company for cheaper. The .company TLD was purchased by Donuts, a domain registry startup launched in 2010. Consequently, web registries have expressed concern that the abundant supply from the new TLDs has started to hurt the resale value of the premium .com domain names.

While there is no doubt that this is good for the consumers (businesses that require to purchase these domain names) as it makes these .com domains more affordable, the move to launch new generic TLDs has however not impacted the speculation market by one bit. Back in the day, businesses speculated on premium .com domain names and bought them with the hope of making multimillion dollar resales. Today companies like Amazon own domains like denim.clothing, and fixtures.plumbing for no reason other than to prevent these attractive names from falling into the hands of a competitor.

But beyond the world of domain resellers and speculators, the launch of these new gTLDs has opened up a world of opportunities. While the world has still not gotten used to the sight of domains like joes.pizza, it is not a long time away. The sheer abundance of attractive new domain names would lead to a market where attractive new domain names will be available for pennies.

This would in turn bring about a scenario where whole marketing campaigns could revolve around a domain name made just for the purpose. For instance, Sony could launch a 'Make Believe' campaign where users instead of being taken to a landing page within Sony.com could be directed to make.believe instead. The only reason a company like Sony does not have a website at make.believe today is because people do not immediately identify it as a website.

The market could soon evolve to accept the existence of these generic TLDs. With the enormous supply bringing the price of domains down to pennies, internet marketing could relatively become much more cheaper. From a small business owners' perspective, it costs little to nothing to buy an attractive domain name for pennies and follow it up with setting and hosting a quick landing page for free on platforms like IM Creator, Wordpress or Joomla. Services like URL shorteners and QR codes that are used to make a lengthy URL shareable may no longer be needed when you can promote free.pizzas.today instead.

While the downward spiral of domain name registration costs could put a few companies out of business, it will lead to a healthy consolidation through the future. It is still not uncommon for businesses to register domains and host websites over two independent providers. Cheaper domain names could mean that more and more businesses would then start offering domain name registration as a value add-on and there will seldom be companies for whom it is the 'bread and butter' business.

This is a good thing for consumers for whom all website related products and services would now be available under a single roof. Take the example of a company like Fibernet that today provides server colocation spaces to enterprises. Businesses in this space routinely provide add-on services like website hosting, design and SEO services to customers. With domain names becoming a commodity worth mere pennies, these companies could soon begin offering domain name registration as well to customers.

Similarly, companies like GoDaddy that started off providing domain name registrations could eventually expand their offerings to all website management related services in order to stay in business. From a business owner's perspective, this would mean one provider to outsource all web related services to. This does help with a more efficient use of resources.

At first sight, the launch of generic TLDs does not seem like anything more than a gimmick. The adoption of such names too has been slower than anticipated. But as more and more businesses get online and a new protocol emerges where businesses start adopting new domain names for each of their marketing campaigns, we will see a drastic shift in the domain name industry – both from the perspective of the businesses running them as well as as consumers.

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