The Next Net

gTLDs have been the subject of recurring discussions within ICANN, and for good reason. There are several aspects to the question.

The first one is purely competitive. In which market would a regulator admit that one company holds 84% of the market? I use the term “regulator” on purpose. In a sense, ICANN is the regulation authority with regard to the domain name system. It needs to set rules that encourage competition and not enforce a quasi-monopoly.

The other factor is how the gTLDs respond to the market demand. As an example, a .blog TLD would answer a real demand currently. Actually, it would have been even more successful should it have appeared one year ago. If it ever gets approved by ICANN, it may well be that the blog bubble has in the meantime exploded. The net benefit of having more gTLDs is also that is would decrease the existing quasi-monopoly and place the ICANN community in a more favourable position to enforce more ethical business rules. The whole Sitefinder thing would not have happened if there was no artificial scarcity of gTLDs.

ICANN really needs to review how it allocates new gTLDs. The main criteria should be how a technical operator and/or registry meet the technical requirements that allow preserving the stability of the DNS system and offer guarantees that it is able to meet these requirements for the duration of the contract. Whether the TLD is successful or not should not be part of the criteria. ICANN does not need to review business plans. Anyway, the real business plans are a company secret. The one drafted for public consumption is more like an advertising brochure, which makes the exercise useless. There is one commercial factor that ICANN needs to take into account and made responsible for: time to market. Several sTLDs like .travel and .xxx have suffered a substantial loss of business because of the delay of the ICANN decision. The process of allocation of new gTLDs should include a time limit (e.g. 6 months), in which ICANN should take a position.