--On Saturday, July 13, 2013 16:28 +0000 John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I guess I'm missing something. How exactly is having a gTLD >> going to bring in the Big Bucks? Do people actually type >> addresses into the address bars on their browsers any more, >> or do they just type what they're looking for into the search >> bar? > > Let's just say you're not allowed to ask that question, any > more than you can ask a fundamentalist Christian how he knows > he's going to heaven. Noel asked at least two different questions. One is not supposed to ask either of them, whether your analogy is appropriate or not. (And see my note from yesterday.) > You are definitely not allowed to look at the history of .AERO, > .TRAVEL, .JOBS, .ASIA, .MUSEUM, .COOP, .MOBI, .TEL or .PRO. One could quibble about that list -- I'd think about deleting one or two that actually met the rather narrow expectations for them and maybe add a few others that didn't. But, yes, the track record of big profits from selling names out of new gTLDs, especially if "defensive registrations" are excluded, has been abysmal. As far as I know, the only completely successful business model for post-2001 new gTLDs that were not intended as a service for a restricted community has involved an extreme form of the "encourage defensive registrations" model, so extreme that others have described it as "extortion". john