Could be 20,000 or 30,000 TLDs in 20 years: Frank Schilling
States “these are not pie-in-the-sky” numbers and second level domains could be seen as “antiquated”.
Domain name investor Frank Schilling applied for 54 top level domains via his fresh TLD firm Uniregistry.
I remember asking him ahead of the fresh TLD reveal day regarding what his plans were, and he characterized them as “not big”.
54 doesn’t seem like a big number to me, but when you consider Schilling’s perspective on how the naming system will change in the coming decades, it makes more sense.
Schilling recently submitted a comment regarding allowing singular and plural versions of strings as TLDs. The second paragraph gives insight into his vision of the future:
Many folks today are having difficulty digesting the concept of 500 fresh generic extensions. I can imagine a world in 20 short years where there are 20,000 or 30,000 GTLDs. These are not pie-in-the-sky numbers. It’s entirely plausible this will happen. In the near future, every major brand will have it’s own GTLD – and every minor brand that wants to emulate those big brands will as well.. There are only so many generic or meaningful words across all languages. Within 30 years we could move-up a level and the entire concept of SLD’s could be seen as antiquated. ICANN needs to lay farsighted groundwork for the possibility of that spectrum/reality. If we don’t get plurals now, the change will be much harder if not impossible in the future.
