> Larry Smith wrote:
>
> > In
> > school if you spell the word tree as tre - hopefully your teacher corrects
> > this.
>
> Yes, hopefully a correction is made in a safe manner. As opposed to the
> teacher smothering your face with a pornographic magazine or shoving a
> lit firecracker up your ass.
>
> Cause when you spell a word incorrectly on the internet, that's what
> frequently occurs.That's a tad over dramatic isn't it? Typosquatting is a problem, sure,
some of it is annoying, sure. Never has my derrier exploded though from
it...
I don't really think it is entirely appropriate that a child who is looking
for information on the White House could land somewhere obscene through
entering a web address that appears obvious and logical.
What I could see happening, down the road, if this service is successful,
would be the creation of a nameserver service company that would be
targetted at creating a safer (note: not _safe_, merely safe_r_) Internet
where requests for certain names could be redirected to the search engine
instead.
Yes, there are lots of political, legal, ethical, and moral questions
associated with that. I am not advocating it, I am just saying I could
see the case for it happening.
Perhaps part of the 'safe manner' is actually teaching people that using
their favorite search engine to locate 'fobar tool enterprises' is often
more productive than 'www.fobartools.com' placement in the 'location bar'
is?
Boy, at that point, I think you've got the basis of an argument against
additional top level domains.
2LD domain names have some value: I can see the value in "ibm.com" and
"apple.com", due to the geographic scope of those companies and their
overall size. However, I do not see "martyspizza.com" as the ideal
candidate for a .com: why should that resolve to a Santa Barbara pizzeria
and not our local one?
The value of a 2LD domain name is obviousness, and when the obviousness
is no longer present or not valid to begin with, the search engine
methodology is more likely to be valid and useful than simply choosing
to name your business "martyspizzaofbrookfield.com" or "martyspizza.biz".
In Marty's case, they don't even have a domain name, but you can find
their web page easily enough via search engines.
Of course, this leaves some questions, such as what happens for e-mail
purposes (3LD? works) or when the business model of the search engines
change, and search engines start charging for listings, etc. But in
general, I agree that search engines may be safer.
... JG