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Dotless domains are dead

Kevin Murphy, August 16, 2013, 08:41:36 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN has banned dotless gTLDs, putting a halt to Google’s plans to run .search as a dotless search service and confounding the hopes of some portfolio applicants.
ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee, acting with the powers of its board of directors passed the resolution on Tuesday. It was published this morning. Here’s the important bit (links added):

Resolved (2013.08.13.NG02), in light of the current security and stability risks identified in SAC053, the IAB statement and the Carve Report, and the impracticality of mitigating these risks, the NGPC affirms that the use of dotless domains is prohibited.

The current version of the Applicant Guidebook bans dotless domains (technically, it bans apex A, AAAA and MX records) but leaves the door open for registries to request an exception via Extended Evaluation.
This new decision closes that door.
The decision comes a week after the publication of Carve Systems’ study of the dotless domain issue, which concluded that the idea was potentially “dangerous” and that if ICANN intended to allow them it should do substantial outreach to hardware and software makers, essentially asking them to change their products.
The Internet Architecture Board said earlier that “dotless domains are inherently harmful to Internet security.”
Microsoft, no doubt motivated in part at least by competitive concerns in the search market, had repeatedly implored ICANN to implement a ban on security grounds.
Google had planned to run .search as a browser service that would allow users to specify preferred search engines. I doubt the dotless ban will impact its application’s chances of approval.
Donuts and Uniregistry, which together have applied for almost 400 gTLDs, had also pushed for ICANN to allow dotless domains, although I do not believe their applications explicitly mentioned such services.

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Comments (5)

  1. Domenclature.com says:
    August 16, 2013 at 8:57 am

    It’s too early to draw conclusions. It’s coming.

    Reply
  2. Francois says:
    August 16, 2013 at 12:53 pm

    Well done.

    Reply
  3. Bret Fausett says:
    August 16, 2013 at 4:21 pm

    It’s an odd resolution, as it begins with an acknowledgement that dotless domains are prohibited by the Applicant Guidebook and ends with an “affirmation” that they still are prohibited.
    In time, I expect a registry will bring a dotless domain proposal through the RSEP process, where it can be fully vetted. I don’t believe this resolution prohibits that.
    Until then though, this is just news that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

    Reply

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