In a letter to ICANN, (attached) Google outlined that it would opt to use the “search” domain in a slightly quirky new way. It would use it as a dotless domain — think http://search — which would use a redirect and a “new technical standard” to provide results from whichever search service a user designates. In other words, it wouldn’t necessarily use Google, at least if you didn’t want it to.

The letter also detailed similar ideas for domains like .app, .blog and .cloud, in each case the domain simply being a springboard for whatever platform or service the user chooses. The idea, presumably, is to create a single jumping off point for all users which still allows them to use the service they want — or need — to. Of course, whether that’s enough to convince competitors and ICANN that the idea is OK remains to be seen but as of now it stands rejected.

food for thought (how many of us who want to search do the following ? type on your browser www.google.com > type the content you want to search.) i think most of us simply query from the browser without specifying the search engine. that in its self is a dotless search

Regards,

Kelvin

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Kivuva <Kivuva@transworldafrica.com> wrote:

Hi Wangari,

ICANN deliberated and decided that dotless domains would interfere with the stability of the internet.

Here is a perfect example, http://localhost is a dotless domain. If hypothetically it was awarded to a registry, it would mean that our computers would be confused on who really is local host between the local root and the international root. Ok, that example if far fetched because localhost can never be delegated.

Now to quantify my example, suppose the word "matrix" is given out as a dotless domain? How many servers in the world are named matrix? Thousands I suppose. So in the LAN and WAN setting, all traffic to http://matrix would go to the local server, and would never reach the delegated root server for http://matrix and this would destabilize the DNS system.

Regards

______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva
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