On dotless domains and domainless TLD’s

Google has announced their intentions for the TLD ".search,” which ICANN is considering making available.

So along with ".com," ".net," and so on, ICANN wants to open up ".blog," ".app," and ".search." Google has applied to manage each of these, and their plans for ".search" are basically to make "http://search" its own entity that can be used to access your search engine of choice.

Dotless domains are an interesting idea. I was just thinking about this the other day: I figured if someone were to apply for one, it would basically be an extension of some large company's vanity TLD. (For example, Canon's ".canon" TLD could then be abbreviated to just "canon" in the address bar.)

They might be able to have an easier time reaching out to the less-than-web-savvy that way, but it would be prohibitively expensive for most, so there wouldn't be too many contenders. That means they'd have to do some work on branding the idea of a dotless domain: how could you tell on a print or TV ad that when it says "canon" next to its Twitter and Facebook accounts that it's a website? There could be an icon, but I figure that could be even less clear than just printing the ".com."

One unrelated suggestion I liked from Jason Kottke back in 2010 was to use "//" as a prefix to a link on Twitter as a shorthand for the marginally less elegant "http://." Especially for Twitter, that makes a lot of sense to me (alongside @ for usernames and # for hashtags) and I think it's too bad Twitter didn't go for it. If they had, I think it would definitely be a recognizable style standard-- they had a real chance to make printing URL's everywhere much prettier.

But back to the lecture at hand. Maybe a company doesn't go dotless, and they use the same principle and simply run ".canon" as its own destination, with domains functioning like subdomains do on current websites. Then they could possibly brand that "dot-[keyword]" phrase as a more legitimate-sounding "[keyword]-dot-com." (If anyone runs a TLD as its own destination, I'm unaware of it, and a quick search turned up nothing.) I could see that being desirable for both companies who want a distinct level of online branding as well as customers to be able to trust and remember those websites a little more easily. (Not that money can buy trust, but this could solidify what the company has already earned.)

Finally, I wondered why Google would make this kind of egalitarian move to manage ".search" by letting other search engines in on their TLD keyword, if they were to get it. I feel that "Google" supersedes even "search" as the main word associated with a search engine's function, but any other search engine could get a hefty boost by being included on the list of available options. If their market share was being threatened, they might be able to steal away from competitors' market share by just having a better alternative so easily available, but they're so clearly ahead that this can't be the case.

They may genuinely be trying to set a standard access point for all search, as well as giving their competitors a boost so they don't fall into complacency and slow down their development. This is possible, and I'm not so jaded yet to think that a big company wouldn't be capable of something like this, but I grant that it's not very likely. They could do this right now with their current setup, and they obviously aren't.

So why would Google want to promote a way to search elsewhere when there's no real threat to their position as top dog in search? I figure two reasons:

First, ICANN is probably much more amenable to allowing a dotless TLD--a risky and huge departure from standard practice--knowing its operator is tied to a promise to include others. In this case, Google would just be investing in familiarizing people with the concept of a domain-less TLD, dotted or not, and they plan to do this to additional TLD's down the road: first proprietary TLD's ("google," "android") and maybe later generic TLD's in a proprietary manner, if they could swing it ("maps" being exclusive to Google Maps, or "translate" from Google Translate, for instance). The second one is less likely to happen, but possible once they've broken the ice.

Second, they want the data. Since their goal is to "organize the world's information" (or more precisely but cynically, to make money by doing so and monetizing it), they need access to the world's information. They have their brand, but if they branded all other search engines under a mechanism they controlled, they would have access not only to the mountains of data from their own users, but from their competitors as well. Google is a big believer in Big Data (remember that story about how they couldn't settle on a shade of blue to use on a Web page without extensive testing?), and the more data they have, the more potential money they can make, quite frankly.

Of course, I may be completely ignorant here and saying things that are obviously unlikely to someone else. Also, I understand there are security concerns, so I'm not too sure what I think about Google getting it. From a marketing standpoint, it presents an interesting "what if" scenario to think about, but who knows what will actually happen. However it turns out, it's of course bound to be a mind-numbingly slow process, but potentially a fundamental change in URL presentation and perception.

This article was originally posted on The Rolled-Up Newspaper, the only periodical whose sole purpose is to cover literally everything all the time, and then to fail spectacularly to deliver on that promise.