What's in a Name?

The new DNS wants to internationalize the generic TLD names and do away with the U.S. domination of the existing international namespaces .com, .org. and .net. While its proponents say that the new DNS for the first time recognizes TLDs as a public trust, many Internet professionals doubt that the new names will reduce the U.S. dominance in namespace registration. These names, they say, have been around for a long time and gave a certain credibility to groups using them.

"It is not yet obvious that the new TLDs will have the [expected] effect," says Willie Black, managing director of Nominet, the national registry for all domain names ending in .uk. James Gardiner, marketing manager of Internet service provider Demon Internet Services in London, adds that "even where there are choices of parent domains, the customer tends to want all of them." Alth ough .firm, .store, and .web could tempt some businesses away from .com, only few organizations will probably want to leave .com's "aura of credibility and power."