Just a discussion point. Will there ever come a day when .com is overtaken by another domain name and if so what would it be.
[edited by: Lencarl at 10:08 am (utc) on Aug. 6, 2006]
Over time, .com will still remain the most popular extension, but nowhere near its current domination (which has already peaked).
Doing a study on how many unique .de web sites exist would be interesting.I don't think that DEnic allows access to the .de zonefile so the the survey would have to be based on detected .de sites and domains. At over 10 million domains, this would take a while. The .uk zone is also a comparatively large one.
I think that most ccTLDs are running in parallel with .com rather than against it. As for .eu - based on 70% of domains checked, it is a complete bloody mess. The people in EURid were never up to the job of running a gTLD. Not surprising since there seems to be only ccTLD experience there. Perhaps as a result of this lack of a clue, the landrush phase was totally exploited by phantom registrars to such an extent that 50% or more of .eu gTLD has been cyberwarehoused. So until that problem is sorted out, natural growth (people building sites and using the gTLD for e-mail) is going to be curtailed in favour of squatting and warehousing. It is, for the near future a poisoned extension. While some people were talking it up as a competitor to .com, I think that these people were utterly clueless about the domain business.
The parallel nature of ccTLDs and .com will continue. The growth will also be parallel but the credibility of .com has been dented by the domain kiting and domain tasting problem. It is critical that ICANN sorts it out but given the rather insular nature of ICANN, it presents a wonderful opportunity for ccTLD operators to push the marketing of their ccTLDs by presenting them as more credible than .com gTLD.
Regards...jmcc
