Do companies need their own domains?

The theme of domains does not lose its relevance - yesterday they were holivar at once in several topics on the main. The most heated discussion arose around the initiative of the ru-center on the registration of the .moscow domain name .

Basically, they criticize the idea, sarcastically suggesting options like .petropavlovskkamchatskiy or .severodonetsk - they say that’s the kind of bullshit that happens if everyone can register their domains. The idea is clear - once invented to systematize the Internet space, the domain system does not cope with the functions assigned to it: division into countries, division into types, now division into cities is nonsense, the structure becomes so complicated that it is easier to get confused in it - that's all Know that pay money to protect your trademark in all possible ways. It seems like the cybersquatters have a powerful lobby at ICANN.

It should be understood that the division by country is already lame purely from an ideological point of view - the Internet is supranational, and Internet business in particular. The choice of a domain name unwittingly serves as a kind of psychological leash - will we work only in .ru or will we aim at .com? And if the second, then is it necessary to register your domain name in hundreds of national domains in order to close the loophole for scammers? There is a solution, and not even one. At least two options have ripened for me:

Simpler

Systematization is a good thing, and it is completely impossible to refuse it - there will be a mess. Let’s think, what criterion has the right to serve as a first level separator? Countries? The Internet is extraterritorial. Cities? Especially? Types of content, types of business simply do not and cannot cover the whole variety of these categories, which brings us back to the national domains and all the disadvantages associated with this.

By the way, it is necessary to take into account the fact that countries, of course, do not go bankrupt as often as companies - but, nevertheless, they also emerge and disappear quite dynamically on the scale of decades. That country disappears - and the domain remains. But the domain of a non-existent country is a mine under the very idea of ​​territorial division.

In fact, the real internal boundaries of the Internet have long been determined, and they pass by domains - these are language barriers. And it is the language division that makes sense to leave - with the clear condition that only Russian-language sites can exist in the .ru domain, and Russian-language sites cannot exist anywhere other than the .ru domain. Thus, the problem of cybersquatting is eliminated at once - for example, it will not be difficult for transnational corporations to register domains of all languages ​​spoken by their consumers. On the other hand, the pupkin.ru online store, which supplies dolls and balalaikas all over the world, will not have to be afraid that some pupkin.ro will start stealing customers - because such a site can only be in Romanian, and therefore work in Romanian-speaking audience.

Moreover, such a separation has already taken place - .com de facto contains English-language sites, .ru - Russian-speaking, .cn, .fr, .de, etc.

In order not to bring the idea to an absurdity, we can restrict ourselves to the rule - no more than two language domains for countries with a multilingual population, except for languages ​​that are official in other states - this will remove the problem of domains for rare and uncommon languages ​​- almost all speakers of these speak different, more widespread and being state in a particular country, and sites in these languages ​​are quite suitable for them.

Actually, this idea does not even cancel the existence of purely business domains such as .travel or .aero - the main thing is that language domains should not be allowed to host sites in other languages. Then the problem of cybersquatting will be removed by itself.

By the way, this same method will solve the phishing problems that arise in connection with the emerging national, type. Rf, domains - no substitutions will be possible .. rf? Please use Russian letters.

More complicated

You can deal with any phenomenon in two ways: by banning, or, conversely, removing all restrictions - then a non-viable system will destroy itself. In the case of domain registration, you can just step by step, but quickly remove all restrictions and conventions for domain registration. Just to introduce a hierarchy - transnational corporations and megacities will be the first to go - the .mcdonalds, .cocacola, .newyork domains will again remove the problems with cybersquatting at the world level and simplify the life of users. Then - smaller cities (regional centers, state capitals) and country-level companies, then - all the other owners of trademarks of various levels, and, finally, release the domains for free sale. At the same time, skirmishes are possible due to owners of the same site names in different first-level domains - but worse,

From the point of view of user convenience, this solution is also optimal - the trend is that most users don’t bother with domains, all of these “dot.ru” and “dot.com” have become a fashionable part of word formation and branding, but in real life, users simply forget the name of the desired site without any domains in the search bar and go to the first link. Moreover, combining the search and address bar has become an unconditional find and a powerful trend - it remains only to bring the idea to its logical conclusion, reducing the number of clicks from two in the search bar and on the search result to one: in the address and search bar. Figax - and you're on the site.

The idea is a little more difficult to implement - you cannot do without jambs, ships and spent nerves, but, unlike idea No. 1, the transition process is final. But the control that language domains contain only sites in the corresponding language will be needed all the time.

In general, all ideas are good - choose to taste. But the topic of domain doctors can be closed one way or another. Already not bad.