Sometime soon — like perhaps even by the terminal of this year — the dot.com empire will be a thing of the past . Not what they stand for , mind you , but the actual.comnomenclature … at least if most of us have our way . Already , the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ ICANN ] has rolled out .xxx .
Up until recently , .com was the most valuable suffix on the net . You ’ve all heard stories , I ’m sure , about people grease one’s palms up rafts , 100 of random .coms with the hope of sell them for profit . And , indeed , citizenry have been make serious money off their foresightfulness . When I was looking to buy the knowledge domain for the last company I work for , the guy squatting on it was asking $ 50,000 . The saddest thing is , if we had not been so scrappy , we would have shelled out the bucks for it with the intellection that no one takes you seriously if you ’re a .net or a .biz . Never bear in mind that BoingBoing.net , Justin.tv and ad.ly have all proven that opinion incorrect . Big venture capital - backed start - ups really build integral products around .coms that are uncommitted vis - à - vis those that are not .
But soon , that will all change . This site , for deterrent example , will be capable to purchase mental.floss , or even mentalflo.ss . That ’s the idea behind .Whatever . Conceivably , one could buy any suffix they wanted . There are issue still to be classify out , however . Like , what ’s Pepsi going to do when someone registers Pep.si or even P.epsi ? It could make brand name possessor monumental financial legal injury , to say nothing of the earmark sound incubus waiting in the wing . But , as far as I ’m concerned , it ’s a step in the right focus . The .com class warfare has always irk me . Why should a domain be off - limitation to someone just because they ca n’t yield to make up a squatter ?
Of course , this all might be a non - number in a few year when the entire Internet is app - base and the Web web web browser is beat . And that might be the best solvent of all . Facebook on my iPhone , for exemplar , is domain - free — it ’s just an app and I really have to say I opt it that way . But until the walled - garden overtake the Interwebz , .whatever is exciting . Hey , the small fry think so too , good ? Look how long they ’ve been chanting “ whatever ” to every other point someone makes !
