The introduction of the new dot-biz Top-Level-Domain (TLD) has sparked interest among entrepreneurs who are betting on its potential profitability. This new TLD is set to go live in October, offering single generic words like "business" or "home" for use in domains such as business.biz or home.biz. This development is a result of recent actions by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization responsible for managing the Internet's TLDs.
While dot-biz is not the only new TLD soon to be available, it is the one most likely to challenge dot-com for a share of the domain market for businesses. It is also the first expected to go live, making it the new TLD of choice for some. However, the value of dot-biz names remains uncertain.
Despite the potential of the dot-biz TLD to serve as a less expensive alternative to dot-com, the dot-com extension has several advantages. The Internet grew up with the dot-com suffix, and this three-letter extension has been firmly imprinted into the minds of every Internet user. This explains why other General-TLDs like dot-net and dot-org are not as popular or profitable as their dot-com counterpart.
Major Internet players such as Amazon.com are likely to purchase their dot-biz extension and simply redirect traffic to their dot-com site. Most of these companies already have trademark rights to the name and are allowed to apply for them before the general public.
This implies two things: first, many lucrative names will not be available for entrepreneurs to buy, and second, companies will not invest much money to market their dot-biz extensions. As a result, the dot-com extension will not receive anywhere near the amount of marketing attention that went into promoting the dot-com TLD. Without this push, the dot-biz extension will probably remain in the background.
The dot-com TLD will likely continue to be the market leader for the foreseeable future. While many of "the best" dot-com names are already registered, many are not being used. A recent study shows that as much as half of the registered domain names are not in use. The domain market will therefore center around trading names with the dot-com extension that have already been registered on markets like Sedo.co.uk, or Greatdomains.com. Here, buyers and sellers of already-registered names can connect with one another to utilize their valuable dot-com domains.
However, the dot-biz extension will not eclipse dot-com, but it will have an important secondary role as a cheaper and more accessible alternative to dot-com. Just don't expect business.biz to fetch the $7.5 million that its dot-com predecessor did anytime soon.
