Roger Kay”Why, Even After A Year, There’s Still No Land Grab For New Internet Domains”

Roger Kay in a new article on Forbes today gives his opinion on year 1 of the new gtld program. So far Mr, Kay does not see much good. He points to the facts of:

• consumers aren’t flocking to the new domains
• security issues
• cybersquatting
• confusion
• cost

and much more.

From the article:

And it’s pretty much turned out the way I thought.  The additional virtual territory does not seem to have been a tremendous bonanza — at least so far.

A study by World Trademark Review analyzing the top 70 of the world’s 500 most valuable brands indicated that in almost four out of five cases a private individual not associated with the brand registered at least one brand-related domain.  In addition to everything else, Apple AAPL +1.64%, Google GOOGL +2.11%, Microsoft MSFT +1.82%, Amazon.com AMZN +3.83%, and IBM IBM +1.04% now have to keep a weather eye out for cybersquatters.

In contrast to the slippery territory of the new domains, the existing names are solidly established.  The .com extension has been around for almost 30 years, and every Fortune 500 company has a .com registration.  The top 50 global brands direct customers to a .com homepage.  Almost all educational institutions use a .edu suffix.  And others, like .org, clearly stand for nonprofit organizations.  People have come to rely on these familiar domains and are more than a little hesitant to incur the costs and uncertainty of venturing into new territory.  Not a single leading brand has switched its online identity to one of the new domains, despite all the hype surrounding their introduction a year ago.

Read the full article here