Recently Overstock.com, paid $350,000 for “O.co”name. The president of Overstock, justified the price by the possible opportunities that a one letter domain could represent.
Currently, O.co redirects users to Overstock.com.
Many companies have complained that it has been difficult to find a good .com address, and some are using the launch of the .co domains as a band aid for their fruitless searching for an alternative.
In addition, most registries have strict bans on less than 4 letter domains for many legal and technical reasons; the fact that .co seems to be unconcerned with these problems, makes it seem to be “new thinking”.
One fact that many overlook is that the slick new marketed URL, .co, is just the Internet country code for Colombia. It has been around for years, prior to the current marketing trick, and no one really seemed to notice before.
Consider that new or old, the extensions can be confusing.
When the CCTLD naming conventions were being held, Scotland overlooked the importance and as a result .sc is for “Seychelles” and Scotland has no unique cctld.
No one ever said that the internet was fair. If they did, they probably should be shot.
Prior marketing tactics, like .tv for Tuvalu, .cc for Cocos Keeling, .mp for Marianas and .ws for Samoa have enjoyed marginal success, but not ever making the dent in the .com market-share, that they had all hoped.
According to .CO Internet SAS, 39,000 applicants have sought .co addresses since they became available for registration in February. They contend that there are 70 percent of the brands listed in the BrandFinance top 500, including companies like Nike, eBay, Coca-Cola, Apple and Amazon, but nothing close to the $350,000, paid by Overstock.
Far from philanthropic, rather, .CO Internet SAS seeks maximized profits, and charges premium prices for preferred and generic domain names; this “preferred stock” line of names will be auctioned off at a later date.
Conversely, the .uk domain name turned 25 recently and its birthday was celebrated by its more than 8.5 million domain names and holders.
The registrar responsible for .uk, Nominet, is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, unlike the profit machine that .co is hoping to be.
This means that under British law, it can have members, but not shareholders, pays no dividends and its charges cover running costs.
Anyone with an interest in the Internet may join more than 2,800 Nominet members from all areas of the Internet industry.
Nominet also resolves disputes such as cybersquatting, it runs the DNS infrastructure that keeps .uk working, and It also runs the Tier 1 registry for UK Enum.
This is a unique service that combines telephone numbers and the Domain Name System to simplify the way telephone calls over the Internet work. Enum lets callers know if you can receive VoIP calls.
Nominet research has shown that 77% of British consumers preferred to use a .uk rather than a .com when searching for information online.
Earlier this year, the controversial Digital Economy Act, passed, which gave the secretary of state ultimate control of Nominet, despite its years of successful autonomous operation and a fierce lobbying campaign to stay independent.
Its desire for independence online is not unique however; recently German glass and component company Schott AG has filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “.schott” for “Registration of domain names (legal services); management of domain names; renting or leasing of domain names; allocation of domain names; trading in domain names.”
The issue arises with US Trademark law as the German glass company “Schott Glass” ( no pun intended initially) owns the trademark for “Schott” and domain names have strict guidelines against being “non-generic” for obvious reasons.
It is widely believed that this application will be denied on these grounds.
The one thing that is a constant, within the realm of the Internet, is that it will never be boring.
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