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Finally .eco domains are almost here!

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James Helliwell
April 28, 2016


James Helliwell
James Helliwell has written 5 articles for DomainInformer.
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.ECO domains have long been in the pipelines. The fight to allow members of the public access to .ECO domains feels like it has been raging for years. The struggle began with Al Gore’s coalition with Dot Eco LLC back in 2009. There focus was to ensure better visibility for worthy environmental movements in the online space.

Almost a decade later and it is looking like the battle has been won.  .ECO domain names are expected to hit the public domain later in the year.

One concern for industry watchers however, is that it is not yet clear whether there will  be a general auction as is standard practice or whether ICANN will strike a deal with environmental big wigs such as Dot Eco LLC and the Big Room Alliance.  The latter is an alliance made up of some of the biggest names in the environmental activism sphere such as the United Nations, Greenpeace and WWF. Wildlife conservation groups, grass roots eco-friendly groups from Brazil, India and China and sustainable businesses are other members of the group. This makes it more than likely that ICANN will cede control of the domain to the Big Room Alliance.  This is what environmental protection groups want anyway.

What is the argument against an auction?

Brendan at Umbrella Domains says

“the groups are fighting against top level domains ending up in the hands of speculators who have nothing to do with environmental activities. An auction will most likely price out real environmental activists as domain speculators and bigger companies have more resources to deny the organisations with sustainability programs the privilege of using top level domains or make it too costly for them. Environmental groups are also looking beyond pricing and focusing on making sure that the domain extension isn’t going to be used unethically”

Are there any limits to the type of environmental activist companies that can get .ECO domain names?

There will be no limits as all businesses can get them regardless of size. It doesn’t matter who ends up controlling .ECO domains, all business can lay claims to them. The registration process after the initial period of release will be the same as any other domain registration process. The only danger is that business with specific preferences for their domain names may not find the names available.

Pricing for these names will equally be reasonable as industry watchers believe it will be as competitive as .com and .org names.

What about public uptake?

In recent times, new domain extensions have been treated as a fad that will end up not being useful for the owners. However, the public attitude to .ECO domain names will most likely be different due to the amount of sensitisation that sustainability programs engage in. When the .ECO domain is always in the face of the audience, it will quickly catch on.

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