I have said it before and I will say it again, the new gTLDs are just a money grab by ICANN.
Not only that, but they are basically SEO black holes, no thanks!
Not a money grab. All $$ paid by the winner of the gTLD are divvied up to the losers of the auction. ICANN isn't just printing money here or pocketing the price.
"ICANN condones private auctions, as it has encouraged applicants to resolve contention themselves, presumably through buy-outs, partnerships, and auctions. ICANN offers its own auction model as a last resort. All proceeds from gTLDs auctioned off under ICANN's auction model will go to ICANN as "excess funds" that will be redistributed at a later date, in ways that are yet to be determined.[2] "
"The first ICANN auction of last resort was concluded on 4 June 2014 for the string .信息 which had two applicants. The winning price was $600,000 US Dollars. ICANN used their authorized auction services provider Power Auctions, LLC to carry out the auctions."
Not really. The citation you mentioned above itself says, under "Private Auctions" --
> The winner will pay the amount of the second-highest bid, split either equally or proportionally between the losing applicants
And if you look at the news articles from the time that .blog was auctioned -- like http://domainincite.com/17991-blog-won-in-eight-figure-aucti... -- Minds + Machines, one of the losing bidders, revealed that they had received 3.4 million dollars after pulling out of the bidding for both `.blog` and `.store`
Also, apart from all the above which is public knowledge and there for you to find on your own, I work for Automattic, and when I checked with those who were involved with the .blog purchase, he confirmed that the winning bid was dispersed to the losing bidders. All in all, not a bad consolation prize.
No, I think they are needed. The .com namespace is crowded, it's really hard to find a nice, short domain name, as pretty much everything under 6 characters has been bought up.
If we can get older blogs and new blogs onto the .blog namespace, then this will free up .com for what it was intended for; companies.
Oh, so consumers make a difference between name.co, name.com, name.website, name.online, name.click, name.link? Gimme a break! This is a legalized scam and ICANN is a mafia!
It's a non-profit organization, hardly the kind of organization I would call a mafia. And yes, consumers can tell the difference between the different domain names. We already have hundreds for different countries, like .ca, .us, .uk, etc.
You're really looking for a problem where there is none.
As an organization - it's a non-profit one, true, but it is its bribable members who make it a mafia. I've been in the domain business since 2000 and I know a thing or two. ICANN is a mafia, period! And nobody in the domain business has any doubt about it!
What's your solution? Because you just sound like a tin-foil hat conspiracist at this point. There has to be an organization that manages domain names, how else would they be managed?