Think of a website. You’ll probably end up with .com, by far the most popular domain ending. It is estimated that some 160 million websites around the world work under this termination.10 times more than the second and third most popular, which are .de (linked to Germany) and .net, of the originals, just like .com.
However, if you now try to register a new domain for any company or project in the form of the web, you will find that it is almost impossible to find a short and meaningful domain that ends in .com.
None has managed, even remotely, to come close to being a new standard like .com, but there is a proposal for a new domain that has made everyone’s teeth long. It is the ending .web.
Of course, its process to be available began in 2016 and since then it has remained locked in a fight of crossed accusations between the largest companies in the domain market. Nobody wants to be left without the one that can be the new golden goose of the domains.
Officially, the company Nut Do Co took over the exploitation rights of the .web domains by the record amount of 135 million dollarsbut some of its competitors pointed out that there was a catch.
Specifically, it ended up revealing that Nut Do Co was a shell company created by Verisign, the technology giant that holds the management of .com or .net to maintain its hegemony in the sector.
Verisign itself acknowledged later in a buried way their link and although ICANN -the organization in charge of global domain management- concluded in the first instance that the operation had not violated any rules, one of the giant’s main competitors, Altanovo (formerly known as Afilias) continues to claim the fregistration of validity of the process.
“There has really been a very important expectation with the .web because they have been seen as the first ending that, due to its brevity and concreteness, could be a successor to the overcrowded .com. That means a lot of business and it has brought all this particular soap opera that today only pre-reservations are allowed but we still don’t know the price or even if the matter can be turned around again ”, he explains Marc Gelabert, CEO of the domain registrar company INWX.eswhere hThey have started to accept pre-reservations from .web.
The many failed heirs of the .com
ICANN is the non-profit organization dedicated to managing domain allocation globally. Its managers are the ones who approve the different terminations that are going to come out and organize their auctions.
It cannot be said that they have not opened their sights. They have spent years looking for formulas so that the lack of free domains ending in .com does not become a problem. From the early 2000s to 2016 has been approving new domain endingssome better known as .shop, .pro or .info and others less like .wyz or even .abogado.
“The .com domains at a technical level do not offer any sale on another ending. You don’t appear before in Google or anything like that, but they have become by far the most recognizable. So much so that any serious brand or project that does not get its domain with .com can consider changing its name before it is born”, says Gelabert.
The hegemony of .com is easy to explain. In 1985, when the web was not even in its infancy, Jon Postel, a USC professor and co-creator of the origin of today’s Internet domain infrastructure, agreed with a handful of colleagues to create the first domain endings.
There were 6: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov and .mil. The .coms were intended for commercial websites, but they would end up establishing themselves as the most popular by far, assimilating in those early years with ‘communication’ and reserving others such as .org for organizations and .edu and .gov for educational entities and governments.
Soon after, geographic level domains would begin to be created, such as .us, .es, .de or .mx linked to countries (although, as we explain here, not always).
And, finally, the new generic domain endings were arriving, which have widened the range greatly. “The process of registering new terminations is tedious, but ICANN opens the possibility for anyone to propose one. In the next phase, a bail is already requested and obstacles are being placed. In the end, in the auction, the companies and organizations bid to see who operates that termination that is then sold directly to the public by the registrar companies”, describes the expert.
The .web promise to be a bombshell, and have raised dust
Everything that has surrounded the .web since they began to be talked about has been surrounded by expectation. The auction proceeds also represented a major record for ICANN itself.
The 135 million paid triple the highest value bid so far by a tender and is seven times higher than the average price of top-level domains. The last record was set by the .shop extension, when, in January 2016, the Japanese company GMO Registry paid 41.5 million dollars for this ideal ending for e-commerce businesses.
Initially, ICANN resolved that:
…he [acuerdo de Nu Dot Co y Verisign] it falls into a gray area that the Auction Rules and Guide do not specifically address. Thus, while both sides make plausible arguments, neither of those arguments exactly fits the bill. [acuerdo] and the conduct of the parties in accordance with the current Bidding Rules and Guide.
Today’s domain name industry is a legacy of the political decisions made by the Bill Clinton administration in the late 1990s, when they sought to evolve the foundations of the internet, then very weak, and ICANN was created as an independent entity.
The aim was to allow a young and promising technology to flourish, free of regulations that could hinder innovation and investment and also to make this accessible to everyone.
However, for years, various controversies and continuous price increases in some domains, as well as the fertility of ICANN when it comes to launching new terminations —it is estimated that there are more than 1,500— of whose records a canon is always kept, they have also been part of the norm.
Will there come a time when .web domains coexist with .com? Will this prevent the price of some domains from skyrocketing? That internet story is yet to be told.