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You are here: Home / icann / Dotless Domains Deemed A Bad Idea

Dotless Domains Deemed A Bad Idea

August 27, 2012 by Michele Neylon

ICANN’s security and stability committee (SSAC) recently issued a report on “dotless” domain names.

These would be where the domain name is the extension – so instead of having $thing.$extension you would find $extension by itself.

As the report (PDF) explains, there are quite a few technical issues with the concept of no domain extension.

Just polling a few users on Twitter last night the responses were quite amusing, with people likening dotless domains to AOL’s keyword service from the 1990s. The confusion element was also mentioned:

 

@mneylon that’s like on ST:TNG – how does the computer know when the crew are talking *about* it and not *to* it?

— Stewart Curry (@irishstu) August 26, 2012

@mneylon @irishstu So stupid. Owner would still have to denote what it is in ads, .com does exactly that already.

— Rossa McMahon (@rossamcmahon) August 26, 2012

The report is open for comments until 23rd September

Related articles
  • .Post Is In The Root (internetnews.me)

Filed Under: icann, policy Tagged With: Computers and Internet, Domain name, Generic top-level domain, icann, Top-level domain

About Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade.
He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

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