The first few chapters of "Domnomics - the business of domain names are available for free on the "Look Inside " link on Amazon ( [
amazon.com...]
). It opens with the .EU fiasco in which a poorly regulated ccTLD got mugged by a ruthless domain name industry. The ebook shows how Domain Tasting was much worse than people had realised and that over one billion (1,000,000,000) .COM domain names were registered and deleted free of charge over the Domain Tasting years. ICANN's failure to promptly deal with the Domain Tasting issue caused massive problems for the new gTLDs. It became obsessed with the academic notion of competition while completely ignoring the real-world concept of demand. Unfortunately, it was an artificial scarcity created by Domain Tasting that gave the illusion of demand for many new gTLDs. And when then the new gTLDs went into General Availability in 2014, they got somewhat less than the 15 million registrations that ICANN expected.
The Domain Tasting chapter (free) also shows how the new gTLD registries were not the first to introduce massively discounted registrations to inflate zone files. That actually happened ten years previously with the .INFO free domain name promotion. Surprising as it may seem, that decision was the trigger for Domain Tasting and for what happened with some of the new gTLDs. In creating a boom and bust cycle of low priced domain names, the .INFO registry, Afilias, effectively changed the industry and created the template than many of the largest new gTLDs have followed.
The chapter on the first new gTLDs in the 2000s (free) showed the flaws in ICANN's long, drawn out accreditation process for new gTLDs and how it cost some of these new gTLDs (.PRO and .TEL) their market opportunities. Though the .PRO projections were extremely optimistic, they were created in a time when ccTLDs were not as prominent. And even when the gTLD could have gained registrations because of Domain Tasting, it was hamstrung by restrictions. The .TEL could have been a contender but ICANN's delays effectively doomed it as a large gTLD and the launch of the iPhone smashed its unique selling proposition before it even launched. But the launch of the iPhone was to have a greater effect on the .MOBI TLD.
The book also shows the geography of the gTLDs with the numbers of gTLD domain names registered in each country by registrar and by hoster. It also shows which countries dominate various gTLDs and explains why it is more difficult to sell a English language premium domain in some new gTLDs. The unintended effect of ICANN's failure to deal with Domain Tasting was that it kickstarted growth in the ccTLDs and toppled .COM from the throne in countries with strong ccTLDs.
The Web Usage chapter shows how domain names are actually being used in the new gTLDs and in COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO. It also shows how ICANN's review team managed to choose the worst possible set of domain name reports (the bursting of the 2015 Chinese Bubble) for its comparison with its highly optimistic assessment of "parking" in the new gTLDs. Of the new gTLDs in its survey, over 80% of them would be deleted within a year and some would have over 95% deletion by the second year. The chapter shows the actual usage of the new gTLDs and why, rather than having "parking" percentages similar to legacy gTLDs, some of these gTLDs have less than 5% active content. Some of the new gTLDs are wastelands of holding pages, PPC and abandoned websites but there are some where development and usage is taking place.
There's a myth that all of the good domain names are taken. Chapter 9 explains why this is not so. For the first time, it breaks down the registrations in .COM/NET/ORG by year of registration. It also shows that, far from being unchanging monoliths, approximately 36% of .COM are reregistrations.
Regards...jmcc
