Perhaps ICANN should auction off the rest of the ascii alphabet and use the cash as a trust fund for development of IDNs for languages communities of less developed countries (Khmer, Lao?) and for supporting participation (not just travel! Translation.) Trust fund, live off the interest. How much is g.COM worth? Or perhaps it would be illegal for ICANN to act in that way? Adam (not cc'ing allocationmethods@icann.org and africann@afrinic.net, guessing they are lists and I'm not subscribed.) At 10:51 AM -0400 10/17/07, John L wrote:
We should be convinced that the single-digit domain name will be as a business as the registries business. In fact who will buy x.com, an entity interested in selling sub-domain under the X.com ( may pron oriented site ). Who will be interested in o.com, e.com , same thing.
Actually, the ones that aren't already in use most likely to be snapped up by large companies. Type x.com into your browser, and you'll find that it's Paypal. (Long ago, x.com was their original name). The domain q.com was originally registered by a guy in Massachusetts who eventually sold it to Qwest, a large telephone company, because Q is their symbol on the stock exchange. z.com belongs to Nissan, the car maker, which uses it to promote their Z series of cars.
At this point, I don't see any reason to treat one or two letter names any differently from any other names. This is particularly true in domains that allow second level IDNs since the number of single character names will be in the thousands.
R's, John
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