Google Applies For Dot-LOL Domain

judgecorp writes "Google has applied for the .lol domain in ICANN's sale of generic top level domains (gTLDs). Google also asked for .google, .docs, and .youtube at a cost of $185,000 each, in the round of applications which has finally closed. A glitch in the application system may have leaked some of the applicants' data to other applicants."

Re:Great...

[a whoabot]

They don't own it; they don't even "own" it. Edit /etc/hosts and point "google.docs" whithersoever you wish. ICANN just own a list to which people subscribe. If you don't like their list, don't subscribe to it. They control nothing of importance in that capacity except what you let them control.

Re:Great...

[cultiv8]

If lol was used historically on usenet [wikipedia.org], and Google owns Usenet [google.com], then couldn't Google claim ownership of it? Interestingly, AOL tried to trademarke LOL [uspto.gov] in 2003 but never filed a use statement...

Re:Great...

[mounthood]

This just goes to show how flawed this system is. When a for profit corporation can "own" a non-trademark general use term as a TLD, it's a clear sign that the system is open to abuse.

Money and lawyers are the traditional tools for dealing with contention. Would it be better if we pushed all DNS disputes through the (US?) trademark system? It would be great if there were a technical solution but that doesn't seem to exist. If we use IP addresses without DNS names it would only make memorable/easy IP ranges the issue of contention (and 42.42.42.42 is already taken.) So, just like email addresses, the naming scheme won't change until we completely replace the system with something new -- and maybe not even then.

A tangent: a co-op style domain system would be interesting. Buy a TLD like "*.commons" to run it. Let anyone in and have a member voting system to resolve disputes (think ugly-but-functional Wikipedia politics). Give the names away free, with the use of a TLD wide SSL cert, or setup self-signing for name holders. A network effect could make it viable, and donations could pay for root servers.

Goodbye, useful metadata

[Narrowband]

I wonder at what point gTLDs are going to make it harder to recognize a URL when it comes up in text. Right now, I expect it's not too hard to write code that identifies a URL as a URL and sets up a link. But when my website name can be AUTOEXEC.BAT, things might get a bit different.

Re:Redundant

[rgbrenner]

Changing their address to google.google is a bit redundant.

well, yes,.. that would be stupid. But luckily there are other words in the dictionary

search.google
docs.google
shopping.google
mail.google
images.google