Dot-info. Is it a good idea?

What's your take?

[rencke]

A customer called - all gung-ho over the news about a new dot-info domain now being negotiated between ICANN and the applicant Afilias on behalf of its 19 domain name registrar members.

Info is his business and he wanted to register his #1 keyword under dot-info in every possible language and asked for input. Even as a defensive measure and with just the 100 most spoken languages, we would be talking of a fairly impressive annual expense if you include the administrative burden.

But how will .info fare in search engines? Is there a risk that it might be shoved way back, like other non dot-coms? I certainly have no idea.

Any thoughts, anyone?

[rcjordan]

I'm going to sign up for one or two, but primarily as a defensive move to protect my dotcoms with the same keywords. As for marketing, I think they will have some "visual" appeal in other forms of web advertising such as newspaper, TV, or brochures. But even this would worry me if I didn't own the sister dotcoms, because I believe a large number would read ".info" and actually type ".com" -I KNOW this happens with .org now. So as things now stand, I couldn't recommend signing up except to hedge your bets.

[Woz]

NetSol has preregistration for .info and .biz underway here [newdomains.networksolutions.com] but good luck getting in, it is jammed.

Onya
Woz

[Billythekid]

I am going along with RC on this but at least you may get a better looking name to the consumer/surfer and in a few years when the dot.com wears off and people start getting used to new domains it would probably be great.

[Garyh]

Hi,

IMHO, I believe it will only benefit the registrars. I will buy a couple too, to protect my clients identities, but other than that, it's a bust, for the immediate future that is.....

Two things can happen and they both may come to pass.

1. Browsers will be programmed to search the <name> and come up with the dot "choices". Now we can type in www.yahoo and the full url will be found! When that happens, you will be sorry you didn't buy all those new dot whatevers!

2. The second will become more of a regional "thing" with even more dot "endings" being offered, like dot fl for florida and dot tx for texas. How about all those three letter / numbered identifications for the airports? MIA for Miami, dca for washington, d.c. and jfk for new york..

Any insight??? Thanks. Happy Holidays.