While ICANN 50, now ongoing in London, appears to be drowning in dysfunction -- the real action this week is across the pond, specifically in San Francisco and Mountain View:
Google presentation on New gTLDs -- Who Cares About New Domain Names? --streamed LIVE* from Google I/O in San Francisco: Wednesday, June 25 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM (Pacific Time US): "The first new generic top-level domains are coming online, from .photography to .みんな. Who cares, you say? We do. We’ll tell you how the explosion of new domain names means cool things for the future of the web. But it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. New domain names also mean new challenges for all of us. In fact, they’re probably already breaking your products. Join us to find out what’s happening, get a glimpse at what’s coming, and learn what we all need to do now to prepare."
Speakers:
Ben Fried - Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Google
Corey Goldfeder - Google engineer on the Domain Registry team in NYC
Kripa Krishnan - Technical Program Director at Google and works on the new gTLDs launch and acceptance program
*If you can't watch live, you can see YouTube recordings of all Google I/O sessions after the conference.
Meanwhile, Google as Domain Registrar has launched in beta: Google Domains. Why Google decided to get into the Domain Registrar business was explained in a Google+ post:
"Starting to test Google Domains It's 2014 " . . . 55% of small businesses still don't have [a website]. So as we explore ways to help small businesses succeed online (through tools like Google My Business, we thought it made sense to look more closely at the starting point of every business’s online presence - a website. And that starts with a domain name. We’re beginning to invite a small number of people to kick the tires on Google Domains, a domain registration service we’re in the process of building. Businesses will be able to search, find, purchase and transfer the best domain for their business - whether it’s .com, .biz, .org, or any of the wide range of new domains that are being released to the Web...We also want to make sure our customer support and infrastructure works flawlessly, and that we have the right additional services (like mobile website creation tools and hosting services from a range of providers, as well as domain management support)... our goal is to make Google Domains more widely available soon ..." (emphasis added)
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