ICANN to Retire Some Domain Names
Those wacky Web hosting overlords that control your domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said last week that it is considering eliminating some outdated domain name extensions, according to reports.
Now which domain names are on the cutting block? Well it mainly has to do with eliminating domain names that are associated with countries that no longer exist. ICANN currently controls 265 domain name extensions, so as you can image - they are a little over due for a house cleaning.
The corporation says the Soviet Union’s .su is on the top of the list for deletion and the former Yugoslav republic’s .yu is also being taken into consideration. Some domain names that have already become obsolete include Great Britain’s .gb, which has been replaced by .uk, East Germany’s .dd and Zaire’s .zr after the country became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Personally I think they could do away with .mobi as well for mobile devices. Nobody from ICANN or anywhere else has been able to answer my question about it. If you want to make a domain name extension that is easy to type in via a mobile device, why make it four characters long?
Typing those one or two extra characters just seems a little silly and it is not making my mobile experience any better.
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I understand what people mean when they say “.mobi” seems strenuous to type, but I believe that will be a non-issue as more and more phone manufacturers default their handset web browsers to .mobi domains.
I know there are a lot of other arguments people — likely including you — have for why there shouldn’t be a .mobi domain. We’ve discussed these on our blog’s misconception series at http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/misconceptions/index.html. Give it a look. Since you suggest the domain should be eliminated, I’d at least like you to know the rationale for why we think it’s a keeper.