Yahoo Tech Thinks .COM Will Be “just one fish in the sea”

by Morgan on October 18, 2014

This is a debate that has been front-and-center in the domain community and will only continue to get more intensely debated as time goes by. Will .COM rise in value and remain the gold standard or will it get lost in the sea of new top level domains?

The reason this is such a hot topic is that it has to do with the long-term value of .COM domains which, understandably, is a sensitive area. Like it or not, there’s a polarization that’s going on and the mainstream media is just as divided as the domain industry is.

“The .com suffix had special meaning for the first generation of Internet users. For children born this century, it’ll be just one fish in the sea.” (Source, Yahoo Tech)

If you read the article you will also notice that they refer to the new gTLDs as “new domain names,” which makes sense since your average person (even someone reading Yahoo Tech) doesn’t know what the heck a TLD is.

“But the new domain names are here to stay, and businesses and consumers must adjust to the new reality. ICANN approved hundreds of the 1,930 applications for the new domains, with 417 on the Internet already.” (Source, Yahoo Tech)

I personally don’t think that .COM will get lost in a sea of new TLDs but I do think that some other TLDs like .NET, .ORG, .INFO and many more will have some real competition and see their values impacted.

What do you think? Will .COM just be another fish in the sea or will it always be #1?

{ 19 comments… add one }

DonnyM October 18, 2014, 11:56 am

.Com will be the whale shark of the Sea. Then you will have the rest.
People don’t want to wait for the new extensions to arrive or get popular, it’s human nature.
No one will “trust” other extensions except what is familiar to them.

Now when will the sharks on “shark tank” pull money together to go buy Sharktank.com, Would that not be funny to get the owner of that name on that show. Talk about an extension of a brand on the internet and none of them on the show have thought to buy it.

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Domenclature.com October 18, 2014, 12:47 pm

I don’t know, Linton, it depends on you.

If the author and his Company, Yahoo, the one quoting the article, Morgan Linton, and the reader, me, are all using dot com, then who exactly is going to use the new names?

To demonstrate their conviction, anyone who blogs, quotes, or pushes the new extensions, and does not abandon their dot com, but in fact move their website to the new names, should be laughed at.

The debate is over. We are now in the midst of the action; it’s been almost a year since the initial ones launched. Therefore, any article henceforth, should point at results, not speculation.

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RU October 18, 2014, 1:09 pm

For me .com is king, but if i can’t buy a good .com, i go to register a new TLD domain name.

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William October 18, 2014, 1:15 pm

The .com values will go down, it’s simple supply and demand. That said, the new gtld’s don’t really expand the global namespace as much as it appears because most of the strings are very narrow in scope.

The best new gtld strings are either reserved by the registry or get snapped up a few minutes after launch by investors. So it’s not like a new startup is going to casually stroll down to godaddy and register car.something for $20. That startup will have more options for sure but it will still have to pay for a premium name. The difference now is that the startup has more options and the domain investors have competition.

For non- premium names, I think gtlds have a very bright future. The registries make several times more selling the new strings compared to the .com. How long will it take for that dynamic to bury the .com option on the bottom of the available names page in small print?

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Michael October 18, 2014, 3:34 pm

I am glade they finely got rid of WWW. on .Com haha

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Marrolla October 18, 2014, 3:57 pm

Huh? .Whatevers still exist?

I though that Team Schwartz won this debate long ago. I think gtlds are worthless .crap and it has become obvious that end users agree.

GTLD = Great To Lose Dinero

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Eric Borgos October 18, 2014, 4:17 pm

Domenclature.com – I am .com’er and don’t like the “new domains”, but I don’t think 1 year is long enough to prove anything one way or another, especially when the vast majority of extensions just came out in the past few months. Most people in the general public don’t even know about them yet.

For many many years 1-800 numbers were king. Then suddenly there were 1-888 numbers and things got very confusing. Some people thought it cost money to call them. And, many people saw/heard ads for 1-888 but got confused and called 1-800 instead. Then later came 1-877 and 1-866 and more recently 1-855 and 1-844. It took years for all this to happen, but I bet younger people nowadays don’t care that much. And, even more importantly, toll free numbers were somewhat replaced by websites. And, websites are somewhat being replaced (or changed at least) by mobile and social media. Things change, but it takes time, so it is way too early to know anything yet.

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Alan Dodd October 18, 2014, 4:58 pm

Em I think dot-com will stay as an investable property worth acquiring for a good time.

Several reasons. The main one: seepage of traffic. It just makes sense that this traffic is acquired by the developed property.

A couple of examples:

websummit.com alexa vs websummit.net alexa (.net developed)
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/websummit.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/websummit.net

It doesn’t mean the mission of websummit.net is over, it just completes a perfect circle if they get the dot-com.
Agressive competitors could move in and buy websummit.com. Unlikely, but best avoided.

There are loads of examples of these. But the next one really surpised me.

Braintree – think they own braintree.com? No sirree. Their address is:
https://www.braintreepayments.com/

Braintree.com itself is actually a sort of science site. The alexa:
332,960 and 161,038 in USA.

urls:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/braintree.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/braintreepayments.com

So this seepage of traffic need is not necessary for success of the mission…but it’s got to be a help to avoid this seepage.

So if the seepage goes, then there would be more of a chance the names would be equal. Small business, professionals I don’t think will like that seepage.

Whatever happens – braintree, I had heard of this company, but had no idea what they did – until I see their tagline – “A paypal company”.

So paypal – possible one of the best ever domain names, maybe even the best – can now support this “braintree”. And that is the power of an amazing domain + amazing content.

As for Yahoo – I wonder what would of happened if they had built out all their content on separate, killer domains?

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Dan October 18, 2014, 4:59 pm

Hmmm, i am not sure. We already had a lot of gtlds with country codes. I think the biggest danger for .com is cities. Local extensions that rely on pride of the people in the are to utilize the domain names. It will take 5-10years, maybe more but city by city. Domain by domain, they will release stranglehold of .com value. This might explain why so many companies throwing millions into this betting well. Example, i was walking at union square the other day (in NYC) and saw big wine store with sign somegoodwines.com , a horrible name by any measure. But its clearly best .com they could get hand reg, since anything better would have cost a lot of $$. Now, with .nyc they can get a much better domain name for reg cost. And for their business, they dont need .com. In fact .nyc is a brand, and there is no sceptisim from the users. I will argue that .nyc rolls of the tongue better then .com . Not all cities as lucky, but local pride is a big thing for a lot people. I dont think .com will die, it just become more strategic. I do think evaluations for .com will fall. We might not see huge numbers for .com domain sales, or at least not as often. Simply because city by city, they siphon a lot names. In-fact, we probably will still see same amount of big .com sales we just wont see as many small sales, since thats where the main demand is being siphoned by new gtlds. It will erode .com from the bottom up. A thousands of ants eating at the might tree at its roots.

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Andrew Hyde October 18, 2014, 5:03 pm

Other extensions will only in the end drive traffic to the .com of any given name. Why build a business with any other extension when you could be directing traffic to a potential competitor? .Com’s the boss, clearly the recognizable authority. I think anyone new to domaining would like other extensions to take over, so for a small investment, history has the potential to repeat itself. But, the ground floor opportunity is gone and promotion of those tld’s is just a new opportunty for the registras to cash in on.

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Domenclature.com October 18, 2014, 5:12 pm

@Borgos,

I agree.

However, we may not know everything about what’s going to ultimately happen regarding the new extensions, but we know certain things now; we even know some of the future; some we can guess, and some we don’t know.

From the investors perspective, there are three categories: the registrant, the registrar, and the registry. Yet, in each of those, there further sub-divisions: short, mid-, and long terms. When we discuss the viability of an extension in domain blogs such as Linton’s, we are generally speaking about an average registrant, looking at “short” term investment. Only!

What is short term? Short term means that if a guy registers, or buys a domain name today, he can at least sell it for what he paid for it within the year, or revenue from parking and other considerations keeps it afloat; or similar names as his is either developed by others, utilized, or sold in an open market market; there’s positive activity going on. In essence, tho his own particular domain may not have sold, or developed, but similar names, and the extension itself is robust.

If you look carefully, you will notice that domainers in general have the worst names for their dotcom domain names; so you’d think that as soon as dotdomains came out, most would change their names to something.domains, not a fat chance! To me, it’s an excellent example to calculate “adoption” of the new gtlds.

But Borgos, there’s one other primary reason why I suspect that the new extensions are doomed, and it’s a big one! I’ll tell ya:

The internet itself has been co-opted. Even the dotcom has been multiplexed. Most people get nothing for their domain names; the large outfits entrusted with safeguarding, and operating the internet, even those with fiduciary responsibilities have conspired to make owning an internet domain name useless. The public knows this.

It will take Congress, and the Commerce Dept. to investigate, and take action, that could free the internet again. The giant search engines, and ICANN own everything, the name means nothing. So, if dotcom itself is almost useless, how much could the public value all these new extensions? I say very little.

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Joe October 18, 2014, 6:50 pm

It’s the same old thing, I read Yahoo Tech and if I should do a comparison on what to write in your post, we’re in it, you or I were not born in the same way as the children of tomorrow generations of our time born with a keyword that is the basis of the domain name and the children of tomorrow will be like their parents, the keyword can be .Com, Bwm, Photografy, Berlin,. Net, Org, Co. Club, Guru, Today, Xyz, among many more.

I like writing the article Yahoo Tech: “Heather Parker is a technically savvy businesswoman She has her own website Heather Parker Photography.” Here being very poorly written website Helther Parker, is photography, when looking at the results photografy Google does not go out of first organic position Heither Parker Photografy if we do escbimos as Yahoo Tech header result of the search is to describe Yahoo Tech is your article but the website is http://www.healtherparker.com and if you want to have this photograph Photografy new extensions and Today these still free to be who want to make them yours

The main problems as I write comments on your blog I always say that the trademark issues be great to have many lawyers and judicial matters to attend worldwide.

Example: http://www.FCB.email, Futbol Club Barcelona (Autonomous Region of Catalonia – Spain) the claimant against the owner, registrant, administrative contact of http://www.FCB.email this defendant is a German national stand the test of plaintiff to testify that register this domain name .Email also exist because these three letters with FCB, Futbol Club Bayer of Germany, the website owner is http://www.FCB.email the nonprofit two ways to win the domain name owner or may not be his own strategy is a good lesson and move from game to consider.

Conclusion: When we do not seek .Club or .Com by just typing the keyword without the extension you will get what you want, the children of tomorrow will do the same to see their parents, as we have done the same, learn from them and friends so this will always be our lives.

For the business of the domain names. Com is the first this extension represents the maximum for many large companies and many more people have linked this market and global industry

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Kassey October 18, 2014, 11:52 pm

The rich (businesses etc) get .com and the poor (who can’t afford) get the rest.

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Samit October 19, 2014, 12:16 am

And since Yahoo has been winning the online game we should believe anything they tell us, right?!

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kemji October 19, 2014, 12:19 am

if .com’s dominance was still unquestioned then why this discussion? Obviously we are in a new world era. .com was king, now other kings are rising, just as America was #1, and another power is rising. Change is here and if you dont embrace it you remain the “1st generation” of people Yahoo referred to. .com is the strongest,but thats not the issue. the issue is underestimating the value and potential of other new extensions, e.g ccTLDs. the new tTLDs are making gains on .com’s failures- the lack of good domains at a good/better price.

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Tauseef October 19, 2014, 12:35 am

There maybe many new choices but in every field someone needs to be a leader and I guess .com will continue to be the leader of all TLDs for indefinitely a very long period of time.

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RU October 19, 2014, 3:09 am

All .com’s investors hate the new gTLDs and you know why.

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Duane Higgins October 19, 2014, 6:25 am

Dot com is and will remain king with no challengers. More info. Here: http://www.newmarketnames.com

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- Morgan October 20, 2014, 6:52 am
  
  Great comments everyone, appreciate your sharing your opinions and perspective. Looking forward to watching how this all plays out together!
  
  Reply