So much opposition to a closed .cloud, yet none of these firms bought Cloud.com?

Firms that are worried regarding competitive advantage ought to reexamine their own domain name strategies.

An awful lot of big brands are speaking out against the prospect of “closed generic” top level domains, such as .cloud and .book.

That may be good news for owners of high quality second level domains, if or when these complaining firms “get” domain names.

They’re spending a lot of time fighting the prospect of firms getting a competitive advantage by controlling a top level domain, yet they sit by idly as a true competitive advantage — owning a high quality second level .com domain — sits right in front of their face.

The UK IT Association (UKITA), Open Forum Europe, Intellect and the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) have all spoken out against a closed .cloud domain.

Yet where were their constituent firms when cloud.com sat on the auction block for over a year?

Owning Cloud.com gives a firm an immediate competitive advantage.

The domain was publicly for sale for a year ahead of VMOps . The domain helped the firm get a foothold in the market and it was purchased by Citrix for $200 million.

Owning .cloud and keeping it closed?

It may give the owner some competitive advantage. We don’t know. (It certainly won’t give the owner market power, as some firms are suggesting.)