IE 7.0 has Arrived!

[DryHeat]

Although the discussion at the following link is a year old it does shed light on some of the issues which continue to persist and are not going to be addressed just by the release of IE-7.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/in_pursuit_of_idn_perfection/

Many of the problems of IDNs come from trying to do multiple languages at the same time or languages one can’t read. The biggest difficulty is implementing them in gTLDs like .com or .org. I think that if we focus on helping the country level TLDs (ccTLDs) get going with IDNs in their own native languages, we would be solving the problem for 80% or so of the people.

And, this is a more recent discussion thread:http://www.circleid.com/posts/testing_internationalized_domain_names_idns/

I thought it might be useful to make clear the distinction between the tests (which are testing mechanisms for IDNs) and the very difficult policy questions that confront ICANN. ............The policy decisions—whether existing gTLDs or ccTLDs should control their script “equivalents” (and how to decide what an “equivalent” is) haven’t been made, and won’t be until the results of this test are known and can be evaluated............And even once the tests are over, it doesn’t seem as if a single uniform global decision (either DNAME or NS-records) will necessarily result. These two methods aren’t mutually exclusive...........

And,

The policy and politics of IDNs far outweigh the scope of the technical tests.

One wrong notion being propagated in the community is that DNAMEs will continue the legacy of existing operators, while NS will allow new players in. Therefore, some say, DNAME should be (or not be, depending on your point of view) used.

The technical tests will help establish what is feasible operationally; but they will not determine which paths to follow in multi-lingualizing the DNS.

So, once again the argument is not whether one day IDNs will be commonly used in many parts of the globe and hence would be valuable BUT rather in what shape and form they'd be finally implemented and whether current speculative practices carry too much of a financial risk to engage in especially for folks like myself who have limited speculative budgets.

 

[LeeRyder]

geee, nice come back, calling me "ignorant". Duly noted.

Also duly noted that you missed the obvious, the percentage of people in China online at this time is very small, you know.. think back to elementary school and that word "Per Capita" should pop into your head as being the one true all telling result that matters.

 

[Rubber Duck]

geee, nice come back, calling me "ignorant". Duly noted.

Also duly noted that you missed the obvious, the percentage of people in China online at this time is very small, you know.. think back to elementary school and that word "Per Capita" should pop into your head as being the one true all telling result that matters.

No, you are missing much of the obvious. There are nearly as many people online with PCs in China as in the US, most of them are on Broadband Connections, they typically spend a rediculously larger amount of time online than in the US. But more people actually go online through Mobile Phones of which there are already more than the entire popluation of the US.

No per capita is not the only measure that matters. For luxury goods, the numbers with high disposable income is important. For items that are supplied to everyone but there is competition for that supply, shear numbers matter, whether or not they are yet on line. If per capita were the key measure, it would be Korea not the US that would go to the top of the class. And incidentally Korea is the also the country with the highest number of IDN registrations, per capita or otherwise!

So, once again the argument is not whether one day IDNs will be commonly used in many parts of the globe and hence would be valuable BUT rather in what shape and form they'd be finally implemented and whether current speculative practices carry too much of a financial risk to engage in especially for folks like myself who have limited speculative budgets.

Yes, where the fundamental problem lies here is that many look at the problem of how IDNs will eventually be presented to the end user and interpret that as confusion over what needs to be be registered. All IDN will go IDN.IDN and fairly quickly, less than 12 months. IDN.com will not become redundant, it will just be presented and input in a myriad of more user friendly forms. If you don't register your IDN.com you will have missed the boat!

 

[Olney]

You'll find a few post from 6 months ago when us IDNers originally abandoned discussing IDNers here with the same misconceptions.
Yahoo, & Google are already IDN compatible, ALL of them actually own IDNs. 2 of them have bought IDN Domains this year (only one I can't find this year registrations)
Working out the issues is irrelevent because they are working out issues towards the use. It's not a matter of IF they can be used it's just a matter of when & WE all see it's soon.

The online spending budgets in Tokyo is something I can see because I work closely with the leading companies in PPC, Affiliate, & Search Marketing in Japan. The national budgets are handled here in Tokyo.

Companies spends hundreds of thousands a month on campaigns easily & more & more of their budgets are turning towards the web. The alcoholic beverage companies in Tokyo spends thousands a month just on sponsoring events thrown by roommate's company. You know how much they'd pay to own the best term for their product? It's simple to me... That's why I own most of the Japanese terms for alcoholic beverages with high budgets... Investment guys.. There's no risk for us.. Normal Domains have no big value for Japanese, Chinese, etc... There's no SEO merit because letters in English are NOT what anyone Japanese is searching for.

 

[mulligan]

geee, nice come back, calling me "ignorant". Duly noted.

Also duly noted that you missed the obvious, the percentage of people in China online at this time is very small, you know.. think back to elementary school and that word "Per Capita" should pop into your head as being the one true all telling result that matters.

And that was putting it nicely....
So you think the Chinese/Indians/Arabic populations are not going to get online?
In the year 2000:
China:
Population --> 1,306,724,067 (estimated)
Internet users --> 22,500,00 or about 1.72% of the population.

In the year 2005:
China:
Population --> 1,306,724,067 (estimated)
Internet users --> 111,000,000 or about 8.5%

Growth factor--> 494%.

See how that works?
Can you figure out how long it is going to take the Chinese to catch up with America or Europe?
Maybe not.........

 

[DryHeat]

As noted above, the major issue down the road would NOT be overcoming the technical hurdles but rather political and policy matters; for instance, China might actually prefer to keep the native language content for its citizens under its ccTLD rather than having it under a gTLD like .com....and may be thats why they have already created a home-grown version of .com and .net; for a clue on this read here: http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18914802^15306^^nbv^,00.html

And, China would not be the only one with such motives and agenda.

 

[Edwin]

Also duly noted that you missed the obvious, the percentage of people in China online at this time is very small, you know.. think back to elementary school and that word "Per Capita" should pop into your head as being the one true all telling result that matters.

Per capita is totally irrelevant - I have no idea why you're inserting it into the discussion here.

Take the example of Village A and City B.

Village A has 100 people. All of them own PCs and are online. Their per-capita IT penetration is 100% - but that's still only 100 people browsing the web, surfing, shopping etc.

City B has 5 million people. 0.1% of them own PCs and are online. Their per-capita IT penetration is a mere 1 in 1000 inhabitants, yet that still represents a total user population of 5,000 people.

All other things being equal, City B will generate 50x as much online business as Village A even though its "per capita" IT penetration was laughably low.

 

[Rubber Duck]

As noted above, the major issue down the road would NOT be overcoming the technical hurdles but rather political and policy matters; for instance, China might actually prefer to keep the native language content for its citizens under its ccTLD rather than having it under a gTLD like .com....and may be thats why they have already created a home-grown version of .com and .net; for a clue on this read here: http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18914802^15306^^nbv^,00.html

And, China would not be the only one with such motives and agenda.

Yes, there is something of a risk but frankly it very small. There is always going to be competition between ccTLD and gTLDs although IDN is likely to the gTLDs the upper hand as the IDN already gives a linguistically targeted context which can be much more important the Geographical ones.

China's ccTLD is dot CN. Gongsi and Wangalou are IDN extension that are not recognised by ICANN and do not resolve. I think it is likely that they will be aliased to third level ccTLDs so that they resolve with DName. I do not think they are a serious challenge to either dot net or dot com just in the same way that .com.cn and .net.cn never have been.

Only China is even halfway organised to mount this kind of challenge, but this is not their real objective. There real concern is to have IDN up and running so that the 99.99% of their economy can benefit from exponential online growth. Yes, having domains in Chinese is a huge political objective, owning them is really a long way second. Russia doesn't seem geared up for IDN and if you think the Arab Nations are going to mount a co-ordinated response in a relavent time frame, then think again!

My predictions is near 500 Million dot coms in next 10 years with over 80% of the registry being IDN. Further western demand for domain names will substantial be met by global contenders such as dot net, dot info and dot biz.