Some Fresh TLDs shoot the whole program in the foot

.Ooo registry Infinibeam takes back 9-month-old domain names.

Fresh top level domain names aren’t exactly flying off registrar’s shelves.

They face decades of head start from .com and county code domains, universal accessibility challenges, and problems getting slotted in registrar search results.

That’s bad enough, but some registries are giving the fresh domains an even bigger black eye.

Consider .ooo, the crazy registry that predicted 1 million registrations in the first year and couldn’t get any of its facts straight. Despite full page, front page newspaper ads in the Times of India, it has only regarding 10,000 registrations.

It took a step backward recently by cancelling the registrations of single letter .ooo domain names. Nine months following they were registered!

This creates credibility and image problems for the fresh domain names. Most registries have a clause in their contracts essentially letting them take back a domain at any time. But actually using this clause, especially 9 months later, is bad news.

Ahead of fresh domain names launched, Frank Schilling stated you ought to pay attention to the reputation of the registry ahead of buying one of their domain names. I agree. Without price controls and with some registries taking back domains many months later, I wholeheartedly agree.