This will be a serious game changer for the domaining community and the world alike. At present, US Control has allowed companies like Verisign to be in control of the most popular extensions, including the .com. Now there is some expectation that domains in non-US languages will be on the slate, which is one of the few benefits to this change. However, anyone recall all the corruption surrounding ICANN? Such as the fact that they are supposed to be a non-profit entity, but ran a surplus last year or their massive and unnecessary traveling budget.

We will all have to wait-and-see, but it’s reasonable to assume that more strange actions by ICANN are soon to come. With their recent decision to allow for a plethora of new gTLDs it seems like “good” timing to be running on their own. Now they will have little oversight in what extensions are approved.

I realize my negative tone in the assessment of this change, but I don’t like it. ICANN has not proven itself to be reliable and performing based on the principles it was setup. Instead the many changes that have been made to the domain industry have benefited, not the registrants, but the registrars and registries. Verisigns hundreds of millions of dollars it makes from managing the .com and the expired domain auctions that domain registrars operate (registrars get the full amount of those auctions, less a renewal fee of around $7 paid to the registry) are good examples. I’ll hope for the best, but expect the worst.

Here’s a video on the ICANN CEO Talking About the New Affirmation of Commitments:

The .biz single character auction over at Sedo.biz will commence today, so I’d thought I’d give my 2 cents on the event. And even though the title of this post might lead you to believe that I was asking a rhetorical question, I’m not. Why would owning a single character domain in a horrible TLD matter? While I do think they have some value due to their brevity, I still wouldn’t put my money there. The .biz domain for some time has been one of the worst performing extensions in nearly every category, sales, development, etc… While I was at GoDaddy and helped manage hundreds of thousands of domains I never worked with anyone that did well or had even heard of a .biz sale. It’s not to say they don’t happen, but it must be on such a small scale it might as well not even happen. Ask yourself the last time you went to a .biz domain?

Most of the people who bought .biz domains were either “stacking”, buying all the extensions, or just had no clue what they were doing. I really hate to have to be so down on the extension, but it truly just isn’t a winner and for that matter most likely never will be. This gTLD just doesn’t have the same mojo that the .com or .net have. Furthermore, I see the auction as a last ditch attempt for the registry to publicize itself and put a few bucks in the bank. The extension became available in 2001 and since then is still floundering in regards to usage. I’m sure it has been a profitable venture for NueStar, which now owns and operated the extension, but I doubt .biz registrants have experienced the same. According to Domain Tools there are currently 2,033,687 .biz domains registered and there have been 1,889,719 that have been deleted. Keeping in mind that some of the the deleted domains may have been reactivated and some domains were registered for more then 1 year, NeuStar easily makes more then  $15 million a year just on the .biz (registrars pay about $6 per year). That said, can someone take  .us away from NeuStar, so it can be marketed properly and even better put to some use already?