Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you didn't touch? With technology? With tech
Speaker 1: Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tex stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: The person sitting directly across from me also works at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. His name is Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and he is one of our senior writers. Hey there,
Speaker 1: I know I did that kind of upside down, but
Speaker 1: I felt like it. Actually, what we really need is
Speaker 1: little t l D. Okay, it's different than TLC tender
Speaker 1: loving decapitation. That doesn't sound good at all, Chris, I'm
Speaker 1: not on board. No, we're talking about top level domain.
Speaker 1: You know, how stuff works dot Com for example, dot
Speaker 1: com is a top level domain, and how stuff works
Speaker 1: would be the next level down right. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a little weird. Yeah, it's a little weird the way
Speaker 1: it's laid out, but it's it's how the Internet is
Speaker 1: structured so that information gets to where it needs to be.
Speaker 1: A top level domain is that extension at the end
Speaker 1: of a U R L or email address that tells
Speaker 1: you where in general that particular site falls where it belongs.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's the top level domain is something that's
Speaker 1: overseen by the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers.
Speaker 1: I can remember what their acronymics. Yes, it's I can exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a private sector, nonprofit corporation that was created in
Speaker 1: and it is in charge of guarding those names and
Speaker 1: giving them out and uh and just sort of being
Speaker 1: the rule keepers so that, um, the various uh organizations
Speaker 1: and entities that create eight addresses have followed the basic
Speaker 1: rules so that the Internet works. Without rules, the Internet
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. Yeah, that's that's something to remember. Um. If
Speaker 1: everybody were able to uh name a website whatever they
Speaker 1: wanted to with and there weren't any kind of authority
Speaker 1: uh limiting what you could do, there'd be fights all
Speaker 1: the time over uh domain names and things like that.
Speaker 1: And UM, not everyone may be necessarily familiar with the
Speaker 1: way the Internet works. We should probably do a quick
Speaker 1: recap of the domain name system. Um. Every every Internet
Speaker 1: site has a numeric address literally made up of numbers.
Speaker 1: We actually just switched from i p V four to
Speaker 1: i p V six and in i p being Internet
Speaker 1: protocol and um uh, you know, without getting into a
Speaker 1: lot of detail, it's a series of numbers separated by dots.
Speaker 1: There are rules on on how many how many numbers
Speaker 1: in between and what those values can be, and how
Speaker 1: many space sections of dots in between the dots there
Speaker 1: are and basically it uh, this is done so that
Speaker 1: everything has that is on the internet has a unique
Speaker 1: address that cannot be duplicated. Um. Of course that has
Speaker 1: to be assigned. But if we were trying to remember
Speaker 1: the numbers for our favorite websites, um, I don't think
Speaker 1: we would be enjoying the web as we do today
Speaker 1: because most of us would have problems navigating to those
Speaker 1: things because you know, humans in general are not very
Speaker 1: good at remembering strings of numbers. Yeah, and now that
Speaker 1: we've gone to I p V six, basically there are
Speaker 1: more numbers in a sequence to make room for all
Speaker 1: the websites. So we really be having trouble now because
Speaker 1: we've been you know, it was I don't know, one
Speaker 1: fifty three dot something. So and you know, before before
Speaker 1: we get too much listener mail, I should point out
Speaker 1: that I p V four to I p V six
Speaker 1: switch over is still something that's in progress. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: but it's started. Yes, it has started. There are actual
Speaker 1: sections of the Internet that have made that transition, and
Speaker 1: I have yet to hear anyone screaming about it. So
Speaker 1: that's good. Um, you know, because sometimes when you change
Speaker 1: to a new tech it doesn't work as advertised. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the domain names are our words that correspond to these
Speaker 1: numeric addresses, and you have these domain name servers that
Speaker 1: are essentially enormous databases that map the the words to
Speaker 1: the numbers, so that when you type in something like
Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com, it will go
Speaker 1: to this domain name server that will then look up
Speaker 1: its database, try to see if there is a an
Speaker 1: entry for how stuff works dot com and then find
Speaker 1: the corresponding numeric address, send the the site that lives
Speaker 1: at that address to your browser, and then you get
Speaker 1: to see the web page. Yes, um and uh. For
Speaker 1: a long time, we have been limited in the number
Speaker 1: of top level domains that we had available to us,
Speaker 1: and they were they were structured in very um if
Speaker 1: you think about it, they were structured in a very
Speaker 1: uh sophisticated way. It was originally intended to indicate what
Speaker 1: kind of organization you had, So dot com was for commerce.
Speaker 1: Dot net was intended at one point for Internet service providers.
Speaker 1: E d U was education, GO o V was government agencies.
Speaker 1: You had m I L which was military, and o
Speaker 1: ORG which was organizations that did not fall under commerce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not nonprofits basically, and uh yeah, so seven generic top
Speaker 1: level domains were created in the nineteen eighties and uh
Speaker 1: then after a few years they began to add a
Speaker 1: few more to those, including dot b I Z, dot
Speaker 1: I n f O so info, dot in a m
Speaker 1: a name, dot p r O UHMBI. There were also
Speaker 1: a dot museum, dot kope, dot arrow uh. And then
Speaker 1: there were also country specific top level domains that would
Speaker 1: be put at the end of an address, so you
Speaker 1: might get dot d E or dot MX or dot
Speaker 1: JP and that's uh how some of the domains, some
Speaker 1: of some of the businesses that use other countries domains
Speaker 1: aren't located in that country. They were being very creative
Speaker 1: with that what they did. A lot of television UH
Speaker 1: providers were excited that the very very small nation of
Speaker 1: Tuvalu was willing to let people share its dot TV domain.
Speaker 1: And I do believe they charged handsomely for the privilege.
Speaker 1: And that's The thing is that these these countries for
Speaker 1: those country codes become essentially registrars for those domains. So
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have a domain that ended in
Speaker 1: that two letter extension, then you could negotiate with some
Speaker 1: agency within that government to try and get a domain
Speaker 1: name that falls under that category. Uh. For example, Delicious
Speaker 1: at one point was not delicious dot com. It was
Speaker 1: dot us domain and they had split up and they
Speaker 1: made the directory h d E L D E L
Speaker 1: dot I c I O dot us. So they registered
Speaker 1: when they registered their domain it was we want I
Speaker 1: c I O dot us. So for a long time, though,
Speaker 1: you were pretty you had a lot of constraints over
Speaker 1: what your top level domain could be. Yeah, at one point,
Speaker 1: if you were a for profit you could not get
Speaker 1: a dot org. It just they wouldn't sell it to you. Uh.
Speaker 1: Gradually those restrictions started to loosen up a bit, but
Speaker 1: even so, we had just a few over twenty top
Speaker 1: level domains that you could use that we're not country
Speaker 1: specific codes. UM, so that was it. But then I
Speaker 1: CAN ended up having a discussion about opening up the
Speaker 1: possibility of having new generic top level domain pans UH
Speaker 1: pop up, and that they wouldn't necessarily introduce new ones
Speaker 1: that people could use, where companies could use whatever. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were going to allow entities to pitch their own
Speaker 1: top level domains. And these top level domains could take
Speaker 1: pretty much any type of form, and some of them
Speaker 1: get pretty darn creative. Now it's there is a rhyme
Speaker 1: and reason to this. Uh. Now the first the first
Speaker 1: thing is the idea of, well, this way you could
Speaker 1: have a very specific address for your business or your industry,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, UH that does not have to conform
Speaker 1: to these other older standards. So you might have something
Speaker 1: that really transcends the dot com Like it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to have dot com at the end of it
Speaker 1: because it's bigger than commerce or it or it overlaps
Speaker 1: other other categories besides common. So that's to give you
Speaker 1: a lot more freedom. In order to maintain some control
Speaker 1: over this process, there were some pretty tough restrictions put
Speaker 1: in place, chief among them a monetary restriction. Yes, so, Chris,
Speaker 1: do you happen to know how much money it would
Speaker 1: cost if I wanted to go out and UH and
Speaker 1: and pitch you know, put forth dot Jonathan as a
Speaker 1: new top level domain. If I wanted to do that,
Speaker 1: so that I owned dot jonathan and anyone who wanted
Speaker 1: to have an address that ended with dot Jonathan would
Speaker 1: have to come to me and I would act as
Speaker 1: registrar and they would have to pay me money to
Speaker 1: use it. How much money would I have to pay
Speaker 1: as an evaluation fee the lo low price of but wait,
Speaker 1: don't order yet now. Actually I'm thinking it would be
Speaker 1: more like I don't know one hundred eighty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to upply lie for a new top level domain.
Speaker 1: And now this is why I haven't done it. There's
Speaker 1: there's also on top of that an annual fee to
Speaker 1: maintain that top level domain. That annual fee is twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. So you if you wanted to apply
Speaker 1: for this top level domain, you had to be able
Speaker 1: to fork over a hundred and eighty five grand Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, you had to put down a five thousand
Speaker 1: dollar deposit at the time that you request an application slot,
Speaker 1: and then you would have to pay the remaining one
Speaker 1: thousand when you were submitting the full application or for
Speaker 1: your application to be complete. Yes, and then uh, this
Speaker 1: particular process was just recently ended. We're recording this podcast
Speaker 1: on June, and it was just this week that this
Speaker 1: process closed out because it was open for essentially the
Speaker 1: first half of Yes. Yes, And there are one thousand
Speaker 1: new t l d s proposed, proposed, not approved. The
Speaker 1: approval process can last between nine and twenty months, that's
Speaker 1: what Icon has UH projected, So it'll be a while
Speaker 1: before these go into play, and not all of them will.
Speaker 1: In fact, some of them cannot because you have multiple
Speaker 1: entities bidding on the same top level domain name and
Speaker 1: you cannot have multiple owners. Now, if if a company
Speaker 1: buys this top level domain, essentially what it means is
Speaker 1: that company becomes or entity person. It could be an individual,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be a company, but means that
Speaker 1: whoever that that administrator is, they have exclusive access to
Speaker 1: that top level domain that they can then choose to
Speaker 1: either keep all to themselves or they could create a
Speaker 1: business where they become a registrar. And other entities that
Speaker 1: want an a an address that ends with that top
Speaker 1: level domain could pay money to get a domain name.
Speaker 1: So uh, just because a company goes after one of
Speaker 1: these domain names does not necessarily mean that they intend
Speaker 1: to use it exclusively. They may not even want to
Speaker 1: use it at all. They may just want to keep
Speaker 1: it to themselves so that no one else can use it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting point that you make, because that's
Speaker 1: one of those things for that that sort of be
Speaker 1: Devil's companies. UM. Because when and this is why I've
Speaker 1: been seeing it as a land grab described as a
Speaker 1: land grab in the media. UM is because when a company, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say there's a new top level domain,
Speaker 1: generic generic top level domain, UM, a company is going
Speaker 1: to want to register its name at that top level
Speaker 1: domain as quickly as possible to protect its branding. Basically,
Speaker 1: we have our name at dot com, dot net, dot org,
Speaker 1: you know, as many of the regular domains as it can,
Speaker 1: because if somebody else got our product name dot you know,
Speaker 1: dot net or dot biz, um, they could post disparaging
Speaker 1: things about us, or they could pose as US and
Speaker 1: mislead consumers or visitors and thus misrepresent another person. For example,
Speaker 1: let's say Apple is a great example, so Apple dot com.
Speaker 1: Apple has spent a lot of money, a lot of time,
Speaker 1: a lot of effort in establishing its brand, and it's
Speaker 1: a very recognizable brand, it's very valuable brand, and they
Speaker 1: want to protect that brand so you if you were
Speaker 1: to go out and try and get Apple dot biz
Speaker 1: hoping that you could perhaps piggyback on Apple's popularity, and
Speaker 1: you are selling something else, maybe you're maybe you are
Speaker 1: a third party and you're trying to sell more Apple products,
Speaker 1: or maybe you are um selling things that are related
Speaker 1: to Apple but are not directly from Apple, then you
Speaker 1: could be essentially trying to trade in on Apple's popularity
Speaker 1: by doing this. And so some companies are going to
Speaker 1: take the uh, the steps to protect themselves from this
Speaker 1: and purchase up those those domains so that this doesn't
Speaker 1: become a problem, because the issue these companies have is
Speaker 1: that if some third party goes in scoops up that
Speaker 1: name and starts to use it in a way that
Speaker 1: is not aligned with the actual companies philosophy and motto
Speaker 1: and all that, it could end up reflecting badly on
Speaker 1: that company, even though they're not the ones in charge
Speaker 1: of that domain. So, for example, if I've got a
Speaker 1: business and and I'm running my business as ethically as
Speaker 1: I possibly can, and then christicides he wants to start
Speaker 1: up a business use a similar domain name to mine,
Speaker 1: and he is not using those same ethical standards. People
Speaker 1: who go to Christ's site could in fact associate their
Speaker 1: experience with my company, even though I'm not the one
Speaker 1: at fault. So that's why a lot of these companies
Speaker 1: will buy up these domain names so that they can
Speaker 1: prevent that from happening. Well, opening up this new top
Speaker 1: level domain, this generic top level domain ability means that
Speaker 1: you've got companies saying, well, great, now we should go
Speaker 1: ahead and go ahead and purchase dot company name so
Speaker 1: that we can make sure no one does that to us. Now,
Speaker 1: some companies not as concerned about that. They don't really
Speaker 1: it's not as imperative to them. But there are a
Speaker 1: few that have done this, Apple being one of them.
Speaker 1: Apple has applied for dot apple uh, which you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that's Apple's a company with a huge target
Speaker 1: on it, so you can understand that. Another argument I've
Speaker 1: heard is how how relevant is this going to be?
Speaker 1: Because people are so used to going to dot COM's
Speaker 1: and dot nets, plus so many people don't bother typing
Speaker 1: in u r L s at all. They're finding their
Speaker 1: stuff either through social networks or through search, where the
Speaker 1: u r L is not nearly as important as the
Speaker 1: page title. So does it really matter? Well, that's a
Speaker 1: good question, and and and some of those it's it's um.
Speaker 1: If you're interested, you can find a list of all
Speaker 1: these domains and they're actually kind of funny. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got some that I wanted to talk about. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Um, And this is also a time when
Speaker 1: the some of the top level domains are not using um,
Speaker 1: the alphabet as we know it. There are ones that
Speaker 1: are using other alphabets as well. Seeing you know, some
Speaker 1: of the top level domains are in Arabic, and I
Speaker 1: believe there are some in Cyrillic. Um, so they have
Speaker 1: other yeah, kanji, So they're non Roman characters in the
Speaker 1: up level domains now for the first time. UM, so
Speaker 1: that's going that's probably going to help in countries that
Speaker 1: in which English is not the predominant language, I would assume.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing, their own characters, but um, they're
Speaker 1: There are companies like Apple, Amazon, Google who have all
Speaker 1: applied for their dot names, which makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: But there are other ones that are longer than that,
Speaker 1: considerably longer than that. A couple of the financial uh institutions,
Speaker 1: big big big banks have applied for their names and
Speaker 1: it's the entire name, and I'm going, really, are people gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, American Expressed in it too? They do dot
Speaker 1: American Express, Dot American Express and dot MX, So there
Speaker 1: there you go. Would you go to American Express dot
Speaker 1: American Express. But see, I don't know. It could also
Speaker 1: be you could also use these top level domains for
Speaker 1: internal reasons, Like you could use them for internal pages.
Speaker 1: You could use the for email addressestra nets email addresses.
Speaker 1: You would necessarily have to be just the website. So
Speaker 1: let's say we had Discovery. Not that that's on I
Speaker 1: don't think that's on the list, but let's say that
Speaker 1: Dot Discovery we're on there, then we could have it
Speaker 1: where you know, our address might my address might be
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland at how Stuff Works dot Discovery, which you know,
Speaker 1: that could make sense, you could, I could, I could
Speaker 1: see that as being um an application. But uh yeah.
Speaker 1: In other cases, you just think, what are these guys thinking?
Speaker 1: And and it may be that they're protecting themselves, it
Speaker 1: may be that they're thinking forward. Google applied for one
Speaker 1: hundred and one of these domains. Yep. They are the
Speaker 1: number one spender of a whole lot of money. I
Speaker 1: mean number one attempt at registering. Yeah, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money dollars per pop, and they did a hundred
Speaker 1: and one of them. Here here's a list of some
Speaker 1: of the ones Google applied for. Just it's it's not
Speaker 1: a complete list. It's just a partial list. Android app
Speaker 1: app by the way, it was really popular. I think
Speaker 1: eleven different entities all applied for app, Baby, Blog, Chrome,
Speaker 1: Cloud Corp, Docs, Drive, Earth, Family, Game, Gmail, Goo, Google.
Speaker 1: That's a Google without the Google, hang Out, Live, Love, Male, Meme, Mom, movie, music,
Speaker 1: Amazons also after that one, by the way, Page Play, search, Talk,
Speaker 1: tech Tube, Web, Wow you, YouTube, and zip. All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of those make obvious sense. Their names of Google
Speaker 1: products brothers make obvious sense because they're things that Google
Speaker 1: is very much interested, very much in search and app. Um,
Speaker 1: so I said there's there were there were Um, let
Speaker 1: me say, I'm looking up. Oh, I'm sorry. There were
Speaker 1: not eleven companies going after or eleven entities going after app.
Speaker 1: There were thirteen. I think out of all the ones
Speaker 1: I looked at, App was the one that had been
Speaker 1: the largest number of entities bidding for that top level domain.
Speaker 1: By the way, for app, three of those uh, those
Speaker 1: applications came from companies called dot app LLC Limited Liability
Speaker 1: Companies what ll C stands for. There there are several
Speaker 1: companies that were created for the purposes of registering, which
Speaker 1: is interesting. It's interesting to me that three companies called
Speaker 1: dot app ll C all bid for it, all three
Speaker 1: reps listed, because it does. The document that has this
Speaker 1: lists the person who requested it and their email address,
Speaker 1: all three reps, and only are they different people, but
Speaker 1: the email addresses are different domains. Yep. So you've got
Speaker 1: three companies that have the same name from three apparently
Speaker 1: different entities, all going for app. And you may wonder, well,
Speaker 1: how does I can decide if if multiple entities all
Speaker 1: bid for the same top level domain, how does I
Speaker 1: can decide who gets it? Technically it's a first come,
Speaker 1: first serve. Wow, But yeah, if now, it's if one
Speaker 1: of the users has already completed the process before another
Speaker 1: party has applied, the top level domain goes to the
Speaker 1: first person for the first entity that's served. So that
Speaker 1: means that if Google applied for music and completed that
Speaker 1: application before Amazon applies, it goes to Google. But if
Speaker 1: two entities or more apply for the same top level
Speaker 1: domain during the application process, and and none of those
Speaker 1: entities has completed the process before anyone else got involved.
Speaker 1: Then there's a resolution process where they I can assigns
Speaker 1: points to each applicant in four different categories, and then
Speaker 1: whichever applicant has the most points wins, and if there's
Speaker 1: a tie in points, there's an auction. I figured there'd
Speaker 1: be an arm wrestling contest that I think comes down
Speaker 1: if that everyone just bids the same amount of money
Speaker 1: and no one agrees to go higher, and then it
Speaker 1: comes into thunderdome. Actually, I don't think it's uh. I
Speaker 1: think two companies enter, one company leads UH. I have
Speaker 1: I have a list of some of the what I
Speaker 1: thought were interesting domain names that were proposed. Not again,
Speaker 1: this is just a partial list. We're talking about over
Speaker 1: like almost two thousand domains top level domains were proposed.
Speaker 1: I only have a small section of those, and some
Speaker 1: of them are just, um, you know, confirmation of companies
Speaker 1: that you would expect to be in that list. Do
Speaker 1: you want to hear some of them? Sure? Okay, there's
Speaker 1: dot a A that's the American Automobile Associations that triple
Speaker 1: a uh A ARP so for the retired persons in
Speaker 1: the world. That actually was again registered by a ARP.
Speaker 1: Because here's another thing, I've got one in here that
Speaker 1: uh is a definite, definite flag I think because you
Speaker 1: don't have to be the company to register the top
Speaker 1: level domain. That gets a little tricky. Um, that's why
Speaker 1: some of these companies are registering at ABC American Broadcasting Company.
Speaker 1: Both accountant and accountants was applied for so dot accountant
Speaker 1: or dot accountants, so air Force, Army, and Navy. All
Speaker 1: three were pitched by a company called United T l
Speaker 1: D Hold Co Limited, which is not a company commissioned
Speaker 1: by the military. Rather, it is a subsidiary of Demand Media,
Speaker 1: which is the company that runs e how So you
Speaker 1: have that there are those who would call e how
Speaker 1: All a content farm that they just generate lots and
Speaker 1: lots of content. That's something that people have said about
Speaker 1: e heal. So there are some people who are worried
Speaker 1: about the fact that the subsidiary of Demand Media has
Speaker 1: purchased or is trying to purchase these top level domains,
Speaker 1: Like what could they be doing with dot air Force,
Speaker 1: dot Army, dot Navy. Yeah, now, and so that's interesting, Well,
Speaker 1: the American military uses the dot mill top level domain
Speaker 1: for its sites. UM. So if it's not doctor, you know,
Speaker 1: there might be a civilian department, military related department that
Speaker 1: might be at dot gov. But the Army United States Army, Navy,
Speaker 1: Air Force, and Marines. Can I trip over that some
Speaker 1: more UM would be at dot mill um. Now it
Speaker 1: may be that maybe that United tld Hold Co Limited
Speaker 1: is just going to act as a registrar, and because
Speaker 1: that is a legitimate way of making money, you could
Speaker 1: you gonna do anything whether they're going to sell sell
Speaker 1: the domains to people UM or they could have plans
Speaker 1: to do something with it. We honestly don't know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Anti virus is one of them. That was from Symantec,
Speaker 1: so that's not a surprise. Art there were ten different
Speaker 1: applicants for a r t BBC, so that is of
Speaker 1: course the British Broadcasting Company. There's a blog that was
Speaker 1: a popular one. Nine different companies applied for that book
Speaker 1: also had nine applicants, including Amazon. Not no surprise there,
Speaker 1: uh cern C E r N and it was in
Speaker 1: fact Cern that applied for that design another popular one.
Speaker 1: Eight different applicants for that go Daddy, HBO, IBM I
Speaker 1: E E E or as I always like to call
Speaker 1: it a Yeah, they've they've actually gone to calling themselves
Speaker 1: I E E E instead of the you know, the
Speaker 1: longer full name of their organization. Uh. Inc so I
Speaker 1: n C, not I n K I n C had
Speaker 1: eleven different applicants intel um one of my favorites. Irish.
Speaker 1: Also another interesting one. Dot is Stanbul, not Constantinople. Now
Speaker 1: every Gallon Constantinople lives in a Stanbul, not Constantinople. So
Speaker 1: if you have a dating Constantinople, she'll be waiting at
Speaker 1: a stan bowl or dot is Stanbul. Perhaps catch up?
Speaker 1: Can you guess who who applied for ketchup? My first
Speaker 1: guests were behind there you go, good guess. Konami LLC
Speaker 1: had nine applicants. But if you want it, never mind,
Speaker 1: it's dot up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the dot Konami code. UM. Panasonic PlayStation
Speaker 1: Sony Restaurant was a very popular one shop head nine applicants,
Speaker 1: so that was also very popular. So these these are
Speaker 1: examples of some of the new top level domains that
Speaker 1: we may see in nine to twenty months from the
Speaker 1: publish the publication of this podcast. UM, there's no telling
Speaker 1: which ones I can will will approve versus deny. I
Speaker 1: don't even really know what their full criteria are for
Speaker 1: approving versus denying a particular top level domain. You know,
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know, Like is there I just didn't
Speaker 1: lack the look on his face denied. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how it would be if I ran
Speaker 1: the organization. But I would argue that they're probably a
Speaker 1: little more level headed than I am. Speak. Speaking of which,
Speaker 1: do you did anyone file for dot evil? That's a
Speaker 1: good question. I didn't look. Hang on, you can go
Speaker 1: talk amongst yourselves. Uh yeah, Um, of course some of
Speaker 1: the others that to you know, dot dot lall um
Speaker 1: dot and we're kind of interesting, Dot fail. I like
Speaker 1: dot O O O and uh, you know, there's some
Speaker 1: some really interesting choices, you know with dot l O
Speaker 1: L especially and uh. People were expecting dot w t
Speaker 1: F and dot sucks, although there weren't as many as
Speaker 1: you might have thought applying for those. So more than one,
Speaker 1: but two different companies applied for l O L. Yes.
Speaker 1: One of them was Unit Registry Corporation, which is you
Speaker 1: would probably imagine some sort of registrar company holding company.
Speaker 1: The other is a holding company called Charleston Road Registry, Incorporated,
Speaker 1: which is the holding company for Google. So Google is
Speaker 1: interested in l O L Yes, all right, you were
Speaker 1: asking about Evil, right, yeah, Dot Evil. Let me check here.
Speaker 1: I've got the whole list in front of me here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so it's it's interesting and a couple of
Speaker 1: notable non applicants. Uh, neither Facebook nor Twitter applied for
Speaker 1: dot Facebook or Dot Twitter. Evil is not on the list.
Speaker 1: I think that's an opportunity for Dr Horrible yeah or
Speaker 1: Dr Evil. True true, maybe they'll both fight it out.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads
Speaker 1: was applied for. That's a lie, yes, but still Persian Gulf.
Speaker 1: That was one Patagonia. Yeah, well I assume from the
Speaker 1: the clothing company Patagonia, not you know, from yes, Patagonia Incorporated.
Speaker 1: You know. What's what's also kind of um made from
Speaker 1: recycled domain name. What's kind of interesting here is, like
Speaker 1: I said, if you go to I can you can
Speaker 1: actually look at the list of all the applied for strings.
Speaker 1: It's it's fun and let's see what people sent for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the list the primary contact and their email address is funny.
Speaker 1: And I can only mentioned the emails that these people
Speaker 1: are going to get from now on. I mean, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at some of these, I'm just like, ah, all,
Speaker 1: that poor person is just gonna get flooded with email. Well,
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see which ones of these get
Speaker 1: approved and which don't. UM. And it will also be
Speaker 1: kind of fun to see how this affects things. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to cause a lot of confusion
Speaker 1: in the long run, um, but you know, and I
Speaker 1: do think it will open things up for organizations in
Speaker 1: UM countries where they don't use the Roman alphabet significantly,
Speaker 1: especially you know, Arabic and Kanji, um, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and countries that use a significantly different alphabet will
Speaker 1: give them uh more flexibility in uh you know, using
Speaker 1: and using the internet there. UM. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know in the western in world that it's
Speaker 1: going to cause that much of a sensation. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: places that are only available at their dot entities name
Speaker 1: dot apples. UM. I just don't know. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know either. It'll be interesting to see how it how
Speaker 1: it develops, and what the what the reaction is, I mean,
Speaker 1: whether or not we even see these companies migrate them
Speaker 1: over into these top level domains remains to be seen,
Speaker 1: and it could be that it will happen without any
Speaker 1: hitches and that you know, companies just make that migration,
Speaker 1: or it may turn out that we have become so
Speaker 1: used to the way that the Internet is organized now
Speaker 1: that no one really makes that move because they might
Speaker 1: see a huge drop up. I would imagine that if
Speaker 1: they do migrate, they don't really just migrate, they copy,
Speaker 1: because it would be you know, to to move away
Speaker 1: from the established top level domains would probably mean seeing
Speaker 1: a huge drop off in visitors. So yeah, it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how that unfolds. Well. I think that
Speaker 1: was a good discussion about the topic. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics we should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, let us know. Send us an email.
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