Dot .Web
Another month, another DomainGang editorial is due.
Now that Verisign made its involvement in the Nu Dot Co acquisition of dot .Web official, we can openly speculate on the future of this upcoming new gTLD.
According to the press release on dot .Web by Verisign, the managers of .COM and .NET plan “to quickly grow .web and establish it as an additional option for registrants worldwide in the growing TLD marketplace.”
At a cost of $130 million dollars, Verisign positions itself against a growing variety of new gTLDs, the biggest “nuisance” of which has been .XYZ.
First off, I find the original lawsuit against the XYZ Registry, asserting that their car commercial was disparaging the .COM name to be rather far-fetching.
However, everyone in this business, and every other business for that matter, is in it for the money.
As a 20 year veteran in the domain industry, Verisign has considerably more at stake, than new-comers XYZ, hence their taking notice of the topmost gTLD in registration numbers.
With .Web in its possession, Verisign has a very strong weapon, and an advantage against XYZ, as .Web is both generic and pronounceable, not to mention that to everyone who’s been on the Net for the past 20+ years, the “web” is almost synonymous with the Internet.
Even the Internet of Things will still be a “web” of sorts, and having dot .Web as a fresh, clean, and global gTLD on top of .COM and .NET is a huge advantage for Verisign.
I expect the dot .Web rollout to be well-coordinated, relentless and well-placed around the world; after all, .COM can co-exist and retain its supremacy, undisturbed, when it belongs to the same stable of domain TLD purebreds.
As a large, publicly-traded corporation, Verisign has a strategic vision window of several years – if not decades – into the future. The acquisition of .Web via an agreement with Nu Dot Co ensures that the company’s future maintains the company ahead of the curve.
It’ll be interesting to see what .XYZ comes up with next, in the game of press releases and strategic alliances, particularly with its obvious focus on the Chinese domain market.
