Today is the first day ICANN is officially letting people apply for the “.yournamehere” totally flexible domains and there is quite a bit of hand wringing going on about how it will impact the domain ecosystem. The people promoting it, obviously have a lot to gain if every brand is convinced that they need to spend pocket change to secure “.brandname” domain.
Right now there are 22 existing domain suffixes — .org, .net, etc. It’s now going to a theoretical infinity. It’s not cheap to set up with a $185,000 evaluation fee listed. Details, if you’re interested are at a special generic top level domains site set up for interested parties.
The Wall Street Journal published an article about the race to nab web addresses and companies that are focusing on the pure money making opportunities. Other people seem to not be bothered by the movement and just see it as passing fad.
What do you think? Much ado about nothing or tectonic shift?