Future .AU Values - .com.au and .au

[snoopy]

The accountant side of my brain agrees with your sentiment that they represent a small % of the registration count.
The brand awareness side of my brain disagrees. fb.me, bit.ly, ow.ly and aus.pm are only 4 domains BUT as brand ambassadors for millions of links billions of clicks they are much more significant than the % of total registrations they represent.

If the .au brand fails (or continues to falter as it has for the last 5 years) then your entire portfolio of .au domains fails or falters too.
BTW The names panel listed 9 other pros, do you disagree with all of them?

The actual .au brand is not faltering. What is happening is less speculation since Google EMD changes in 2012, plus I think some business not needing a domain. Ausregistry hopes to rekindle growth with another extension. In Australia .com.au is the market, it is at close to monopoly state. But where will the next 3 million registrations come from? That is Ausregistry's question.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/product-innovation-produce-next-3-million-au-domains-george-pongas

How can we grow the slowing market? How can we get people to register more names? For .com.au it is the wrong question because Ausregistry wants to grow the number of what they call "creates", just the number of registrations. Usage isn't really the aim, the aim is sales, from domainers and people protecting brands. We've got a bunch of people voting on a new extension because they want to increase sales.

AUDA has lost its "non profit" foundations.

 

[findtim]

domainshield here's my answer.
1) shorter is better - agree, but not at an added expense
2) international practice - agree, and from a mobile device world and the future the.com piece is a waste of time/typing
3) more choice, disagree - there will not be more choice, the BEST domains will be defensively registered, its a mere duplication for profit.
4) evidence, disagree - "reported by registrars and resellers" the ones set to benefit most, ask dubbodentist, he doesn't want it.
5) competiveness, disagree - who are we competing against? london.au?
6) low take up of id.au, hardly worth a mention - one of my clients owns her first name .com.au, a VERY popular first name, she doesn't want .au and the doubling of expense, i am sure peteralexander.com.au doesn't want the .au THUS another defensive registration only
7).com.au nothing left, tough - don't wake up in the second half of a footy match and ask it to start again, its no different to prime real estate, nobody wants the council to split your block of land !
8) stimulate ICT, disagree - when its at the expense of dubbodentist
9) not unchartered, disagree, another lacklustre point - if that is the case then lets redefine this as the .com.au has out grown its usefulness and we need to upgrade to .au, but there is no reason to have both if you are calling the .com.au unsatifactory for future purposes. As for unchartered, well the examples are uk and nz and they both chose the rocky road and now australia intends to take the good bits of a bad bunch and hopefully make a better pie, its going to be a "better bad pie"

tim

 

[DomainShield]

They could......but why would they? They are a small business. They aren't going to be reading reports on all this kind of stuff.

From my experience in the industry it works like this.

Non-commercial parties (like auDA) will provide general information on the availability of, and benefits of, the extension. They will also provide mechanisms for addressing the cons and assisting parties who are disadvantaged by the process. They will publish and maintain the policies relating to the new extension.

Wholesale providers (like AusRegistry) will provide general information to their Resellers (MelbourneIT, Netregistry etc). Drop catchers also fall into the camp of wholesale providers so Domain Shield (and probably Netfleet and Drop) will reach out to and work with Domain Investors (you are my Resellers) to educate you on the potential benefits of the extension and how to improve or maintain your sales moving forward.

If there is a commercial benefit to suppliers and a potential commercial benefit to their clients then existing registrant will be contacted by their current Registrar, Reseller, Web Developer or Domain Investor and the opportunity will be pitched to them. If there is a commercial benefit or a specific demand from new registrants then the extension will be offered by Registrars, Resellers, Web Developers and Domain Investors. The opportunity will be pitched to them during the initial sales process.

As a Domain Investor you are both a demand and supply participant in this process so when buying an .au domain from me you need to be clear on my motives when pitching the value to you (be wary and argue with me) but you also need to be aware of the value you give to the end user when you on sell or utilise the domain (don't just dismiss everything I say as marketing spin).

 

[snoopy]

6) low take up of id.au, hardly worth a mention - one of my clients owns her first name .com.au, a VERY popular first name, she doesn't want .au and the doubling of expense, i am sure peteralexander.com.au doesn't want the .au THUS another defensive registration only

That is a funny one,

When .id.au was brought in (around 2000/2001) people thought AUDA was completely out of touch. Why on earth would anyone want that? Rather than .id.au being an argument in favour of .au it should be held up as a example of AUDA's past incompetence, especially when it comes to the decision to bring in a new extension.

Ditto for promoting .net.au , another waste of money. Why promote a dog (.id.au, .au, .net.au) when you have a winner (.com.au) that is being held back with red tape?

The obvious way to get people register names for personal use is to allow them to register names in the extension they actually want, .com.au, not .id.au, not .au.

Here is another of AUDA proposals,

https://www.auda.org.au/news/auda-invites-proposals-for-new-2lds-conf-au-and-info-au/

Can you believe AUDA thought that up .info.au in 2009? 7 years after .info had already flopped? AUDA has along history of never making a success of any extension, they inherited an already highly successful .com.au.

 

[DomainShield]

The actual .au brand is not faltering. What is happening is less speculation since Google EMD changes in 2012, plus I think some business not needing a domain. Ausregistry hopes to rekindle growth with another extension. In Australia .com.au is the market, it is at close to monopoly state. But where will the next 3 million registrations come from? That is Ausregistry's question.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/product-innovation-produce-next-3-million-au-domains-george-pongas

How can we grow the slowing market? How can we get people to register more names? For .com.au it is the wrong question because Ausregistry wants to grow the number of what they call "creates", just the number of registrations. Usage isn't really the aim, the aim is sales, from domainers and people protecting brands. We've got a bunch of people voting on a new extension because they want to increase sales.

The auDA board is made up of a balance of supply class and demand class directors with a group of independent directors to ensure balance. It is not possible for the supply class to affect change unless the demand class and or the independent directors want the same change. AusRegistry only represents 1/4 of the supply class directors so it is not feasible for them to affect self serving changes on their own. I think it is far more likely that this change is actually popular with all three classes of directors because it is actually for the betterment of the .au namespace.

AUDA has lost its "non profit" foundations.

This is not true, statements like this make me think you are acting like an Internet tough guy in front of your mates.

 

[snoopy]

The auDA board is made up of a balance of supply class and demand class directors with a group of independent directors to ensure balance. It is not possible for the supply class to affect change unless the demand class and or the independent directors want the same change. AusRegistry only represents 1/4 of the supply class directors so it is not feasible for them to affect self serving changes on their own. I think it is far more likely that this change is actually popular with all three classes of directors because it is actually for the betterment of the .au namespace.


This is not true, statements like this make me think you are acting like an Internet tough guy in front of your mates.

It is true because there is people with clear conflicts of interest voting on .au, they are conflicted because they stand to significantly increase revenue from selling .au names. You've got "for profit" people making decisions for an organisation that is supposed to be a non profit. People who represent registries/registrars/resellers shouldn't be voting on this.

What would the vote have been without those conflicted board members voting? Sounds like we won't find that out.

 

[Shane]

it is actually for the betterment of the .au namespace.

I disagree with this statement so strongly.

The only real benefit is shorter and more visually appealing domains.

Oh, and millions of dollars in increased revenue for those on the supply side.

When two of the most successful online businesses in Australia - realestate.com.au and carsales.com.au - register their strong opposition, it says a lot to me.

In terms of being "for the betterment of the .au namespace", I guess it depends who you think should be the main beneficiaries of said space. Is it the end-users of domains or is it the people supplying domains? Or is it the general public using domain names to navigate to the websites of end-users...?

I honestly don't see how the benefits of direct registrations for end-users could go anywhere near outweighing the negatives.

The flip-side is true for the supply side...

I totally understand why the supply side wanted these changes. If I could help push through a change that resulted in more tradies needing insurance or more people buying nuts, of course I would do whatever I could to help push that barrow!

But just be honest about your motives. Tell us it's going to be good for your business; don't try and tell us why it's going to be good for our business when we know it's not.

That last line isn't directed at you personally, but just at the pro-direct registration lobby in general.

 

[Scott.L]

According to bit.ly you can "Drive CTR up to 34% with Branded Short Domains.

Vanity extensions like .LY for Libya and .SY for Syria and .TV for Tuvalu Islands with a population of 10,000 is charged with sovereign risk – infrastructure failure, civil war or a foreign attack would be catastrophic to a big business using those extensions.

Roughly2000 new gTLD’s will be released with an average letter count of 5 – what about those extensions? Over 15 million registrations and counting across 900+ released gTLD’s

AND, whose agenda is it for the new extension auDA or ICANN -
License Fee-ICANN/CCTLD over $600k 2014 $350k 2015 looks like the registration income is diminishing –

Registries will have a small short term profit spike with the release of a new .au extension but it will only bring a market arbitrage to the registries as pricing for .com.au reduces and .au increases, each equalise and at a reduced discount to current market prices. Then what?

 

[DomainShield]

domainshield here's my answer.

Thanks for taking the time to provide your input.

1) shorter is better - agree, but not at an added expense

I am glad you agree that there is some benefit, to me the expense is insignificant to the majority of small businesses. I do acknowledge that it is a significant (and potentially bankrupting) expense for the holders of very large portfolios of .au domains. I am keen for Domain Investors to stop trying to "stand up for" or "speak for" small businesses. The hard truth is that one or two dozen companies are potentially going to be destroyed by the expense and they need to lobby urgently for their own future by making a case for how it affects them directly. The most logical request would be to make a clear logical case for grandfathering rights for a specific number of years. In the UK they had 5 year grandfathering rights.

2) international practice - agree, and from a mobile device world and the future the.com piece is a waste of time/typing

3) more choice, disagree - there will not be more choice, the BEST domains will be defensively registered, its a mere duplication for profit.

Have you ever wanted to build a fan site or start up a non-commercial photography site. Individuals and non-commercial websites are not really suited to .com.au and id.au is a flop.

4) evidence, disagree - "reported by registrars and resellers" the ones set to benefit most, ask dubbodentist, he doesn't want it.

This concern was raised and auDA conducted an recent survey independently of the registrars which came back with the same answer. FYI I don't consider the argument about auDA being biased or commercially motivated or being manipulated by aliens to be valid so can you just acknowledge that you are aware of the new evidence and that the evidence you don't like has now been provided by auDA. Basically we are no longer relying on data "reported by registrars".

5) competiveness, disagree - who are we competing against? london.au?

We are competing against all the new gTLDs and other country codes like .ly and .me. Bloggers, campaigns and individuals in Australia many of whom become popular and or influential without being commercial entities do not use com.au domain registrations (lack of ABN) and are turning to other extensions.

6) low take up of id.au, hardly worth a mention - one of my clients owns her first name .com.au, a VERY popular first name, she doesn't want .au and the doubling of expense, i am sure peteralexander.com.au doesn't want the .au THUS another defensive registration only

points 6 and 5 need to be read together. Basically past Names Panels put forward id.au as a solution to the problem of individuals not being represented by the old two level .au system. The reality is that id.au is a failure and that Bloggers, individuals and artists dislike id.au but would still like to be identified as Australian. There is an opportunity for the next "Chris (aka The Aussie Nomad)" to chose the nextnomad.au as his(or her) domain name rather than theaussienomad.com

7).com.au nothing left, tough - don't wake up in the second half of a footy match and ask it to start again, its no different to prime real estate, nobody wants the council to split your block of land !

I agree, this is not a great pro.

8) stimulate ICT, disagree - when its at the expense of dubbodentist

Exciting startups inside universities and project started by students or artists using .au rather than .com or .xyz in my books is more important than duddodentist's insignificant extra expense.

9) not unchartered, disagree, another lacklustre point - if that is the case then lets redefine this as the .com.au has out grown its usefulness and we need to upgrade to .au, but there is no reason to have both if you are calling the .com.au unsatifactory for future purposes. As for unchartered, well the examples are uk and nz and they both chose the rocky road and now australia intends to take the good bits of a bad bunch and hopefully make a better pie, its going to be a "better bad pie"

There is going to be a long transitions period between one being more popular than the other. There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. .au is going to continue to evolve based on the needs and demands of the users of the namespace.

 

[findtim]

if its good for the namespace then make defensive registrations FREE, if that was on the agenda there wouldn't be this hard a push.

stakeholders in this industry are domain name owners not registrars.
Registrars are businesses that have seen an opportunity to make profit like any good business and provide a much needed service in the circle of life of a domain name, their investment in facilitating this service is just a cost of doing business not something to be overly praised and thanked for, just a calculated investment by them to return profit. I'm not saying disregard them but the truth is if one was to stop today it would not have a long lasting impact on the industry as others would just take its place.
the domain owner is the core, yet they have not been consulted.
i've spent a lot of extra time speaking to my clients and i must say the overall response is "dumb founded" that if i didn't contact them they would be totally unaware of these changes.
one past client 15 years ago i decided to call today and tell him, he said "auda who " he has owned his domain name for 15 years in a highly competitive market and was mortified he would have to pay twice without being asked.
if there was a competitor to auda eg: nf v drop , everyone would move their accounts to the other ( well you get the drift ! )
its only the conflict of interest on the board, the lack of domain owner involvement and the stupidity that you must be a paid member to vote that is allowing this to float.
if auda did the HONEST impartial thing and truly told everyone the suggestion would be tomorrows recycling paper.
auda needs to be switzerland here and i'm not seeing that.

tim

 

[Shane]

I am keen for Domain Investors to stop trying to "stand up for" or "speak for" small businesses.

I am standing up for and speaking for small businesses. I also regard myself as a domain investor, but primarily for the purposes of my own businesses, as I understand the benefits of great domain names, and in particular great com.au domains.

I have close to 3,000 small business owners who are clients of my insurance business. I've only spoken to a very small handful so far, and the response has been negative. They don't want to have to deal with yet another thing that takes money from their back pocket without really putting anything back.

This concern was raised and auDA conducted an recent survey independently of the registrars which came back with the same answer. FYI I don't consider the argument about auDA being biased or commercially motivated or being manipulated by aliens to be valid so can you just acknowledge that you are aware of the new evidence and that the evidence you don't like has now been provided by auDA. Basically we are no longer relying on data "reported by registrars".

I was sent that survey and it was a joke. It was poorly constructed and was always going to give the same result.

Respondents were not given the required information to provide informed answers, and to me that means you cannot point to it as reliable evidence.

We are competing against all the new gTLDs and other country codes like .ly and .me. Bloggers, campaigns and individuals in Australia many of whom become popular and or influential without being commercial entities do not use com.au domain registrations (lack of ABN) and are turning to other extensions.

"We" are not competing with them. The supply side may be competing, but that is not "we".

Exciting startups inside universities and project started by students or artists using .au rather than .com or .xyz in my books is more important than duddodentist's insignificant extra expense.

I don't agree that there will suddenly be an increase of great domains available for these start-ups. If the com.au is already taken, there's a good chance the .au will be taken by the same owner. As for turning to a .com, well obviously that is going to be taken too.

The issue with students and artists is more likely to be red tape. Removing the ownership restrictions on com.au is more likely to assist them than offering direct registrations.

 

[Scott.L]

Removing the ownership restrictions on com.au is more likely to assist them than offering direct registrations.

Shane would you be inclined to lift the ABN restriction on .com.au but apply it to .au

 

[DomainShield]

its only the conflict of interest on the board, the lack of domain owner involvement and the stupidity that you must be a paid member to vote that is allowing this to float.

There are four demand class directors. There are also independent directors. Two demand class directors are members of dntrade and PMable by you.
What more could you ask for?

The auDA board is an industry board, the members are expected to have conflicts of interest. They are clearly identified at all times by their class (Demand, Supply or Independent). In theory conflicts of interest are declared and handled by their internal processes.
What more could you ask for?

if auda did the HONEST impartial thing and truly told everyone the suggestion would be tomorrows recycling paper.
auda needs to be switzerland here and i'm not seeing that.

auDA has never had more engagement or public interest than for this Names Panel they have done more and had more interest than ever before. What more could you REASONABLY ask for?

 

[Shane]

Shane would you be inclined to lift the ABN restriction on .com.au but apply it to .au

I haven't thought about it at all, but I think perhaps best to keep the rules consistent across com.au/net.au/.au. Otherwise we just end with yet another different set of rules.

With regards to the overall ABN policy, I actually think it was a great thing in the early days and was a major contributor to the strength of the .au namespace today.

Whether or not it's still needed now in such a mature market... I'm not so sure. I'd be open to scrapping it, but it would need more thought.

 

[neddy]

This concern was raised and auDA conducted an recent survey independently of the registrars which came back with the same answer. FYI I don't consider the argument about auDA being biased or commercially motivated or being manipulated by aliens to be valid so can you just acknowledge that you are aware of the new evidence and that the evidence you don't like has now been provided by auDA. Basically we are no longer relying on data "reported by registrars".

GLOTD. Remember what the "independent survey question was"?

“If you had the choice to register a domain name directly under .au – for example, yourname.au – how likely would you be to do so?”

As I wrote on Domainer.com.au, "even “Blind Freddie” knows that the actual survey question asked was designed to get a specific answer". I also said this in my open letter to the auDA Board.

Anthony, I have known where you stand on this issue for a very long time. And you're absolutely entitled to your opinion as a registrar and dropcatcher. However, I seem to remember that you have less than 5 domains to your name? Many of us one here look at things differently for obvious reasons.

Anyway, you've given me some good fodder for a new article on Domainer, so thank you. (That's a smiley face by the way).

 

[Horshack]

What more could you REASONABLY ask for?

Well the answer to that one is simple. A single email to all registrants advising them of the proposed changes and seeking comment would have been the most reasonable thing to do.

 

[Horshack]

On the other hand, we may well have ended up going this way down the track anyway so let's just get it done and on it's way.

 

[DomainShield]

It is true because there is people with clear conflicts of interest voting on .au, they are conflicted because they stand to significantly increase revenue from selling .au names. You've got "for profit" people making decisions for an organisation that is supposed to be a non profit. People who represent registries/registrars/resellers shouldn't be voting on this.

What would the vote have been without those conflicted board members voting? Sounds like we won't find that out.

Firstly you are making assumptions, unless I missed something you and I have no idea on who did or did not vote.
Secondly less than 40% of the directors are from the supply class so even in a full blown paranoid scenario like the one you are proposing it is impossible to get a consensus.

 

[neddy]

The auDA board is an industry board, the members are expected to have conflicts of interest. They are clearly identified at all times by their class (Demand, Supply or Independent). In theory conflicts of interest are declared and handled by their internal processes.
What more could you ask for?

auDA has never had more engagement or public interest than for this Names Panel they have done more and had more interest than ever before. What more could you REASONABLY ask for?

In my opinion, it really sounds like you are channeling your mentor George Pongas (AusRegistry executive and auDA Board Director).

This is a domainers / domain investors forum - and whilst it's great to get contributions from the "dark side" and sponsors occasionally - don't be surprised if most on here have a different agenda to you. (That's a friendly wink).

 

[DomainShield]

Anthony, I have known where you stand on this issue for a very long time. And you're absolutely entitled to your opinion as a registrar and dropcatcher. However, I seem to remember that you have less than 5 domains to your name? Many of us one here look at things differently for obvious reasons.

Fair enough. I started just wanting to give an option on a very small number of domain names ie LL and LLL domains but there seems to be a massive amount of confusion over how the auDA board works and how I believe balance is maintained in the force.

Anyway, you've given me some good fodder for a new article on Domainer, so thank you. (That's a smiley face by the way).

Did I at least give you some food for thought for something positive... or change your mind about anything important?