Re: [atlarge-discuss] Another lawsuit against ICANN, to stop WLS

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Sotiris Sotiropoulos <sotiris@hermesnetwork.com>

> Public perception is what you're missing.  In the
> (North American) public's eye .com is king whether you or I like or not.
>
> Be Well,
>
> Sotiris Sotiropoulos

I agree with Sotiris about this. It's a point I disagree with Dan Tobias
about. He rants and raves when people "misuse" .com when they should be
using .org or .info, but the *reality* ... the working reality and the
market place reality... is that .com is in most cases far more preferable in
practical terms, regardless of whether a site is commercial or
non-commercial.

The Internet does not operate by neat and tidy rules, such as those that our
friend and ally Dan would like to "educate" us to comply with. The use of
the Internet is much more *intuitive* than rules-based. Most people
intuitively recognise .com as the first and most obvious ending more many
kinds of websites.

Say my longlost friend in Africa wants to check out whether someone has put
up a website about a common interest. Will they try out .org or .net or.name
or .info or .biz or .de or .gl or .anythingelse ?? Commonsense intuition
nearly always says try the .com first because its the commonest and best
known ending.

Now, I run a .info site about my hometown because "info" is what it's about.
And I'm starting to get quite a lot of hits, and I've got it on Google page
1, and that's fine. But I'd still have to say that I'd go for the .com if I
could, because it's commonsense, and most punters don't type in .info, they
type in .com

With .org, I admit that there is a growing recognition that organisations
might use that ending, and I do for an organisation I run... but even that's
just a developing thing with most of the public...

As for .net and .biz, they are far from logical type-ins for most people,
and .biz generally is (a) not even known about by most people (b) regarded
as dubious and down market by many of those who do encounter it... why use
.biz when you can use .com after all...

So I have to agree with Sotiris that it is logical and acceptable practice
to use .com for most websites where you seek the most obvious names.

I'm planning to develop my websites at www.history.info and www.poetry.info
over the summer, but would I prefer to have www.history.com or
www.poetry.com if I could get them? Of course I would, even though my sites
are about information not commerce... because more people, at least
initially, would visit them. And because what other people say is the
"proper" application of a TLD is more or less irrelevant, compared to the
market reality and the up-and-running accepted use of .com domains as
market-leading identifiers.

As you say, Sotiris, public perception establishes its own reality. And it
is *the* reality which each of us deals with. Dan T may say otherwise, but I
think his view is dogmatic and just not what happens. Supposing I told my
cousin about IcannWatch and later on, he tried to look it up. I bet you his
first action would be to try out IcannWatch .com (even though IcannWatch is
a non-commercial org) rather than IcannWatch .org .... and guess what...
he'd be right!

yrs,

Richard Henderson



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