What is members opinions on IDNs now?

[Olney]

I'm curious to see what do members think about the whole IDN market currently.

It was less than a year when this post introduced me to IDNs & I think I had a big part of bringing IDNs to the business level because of this.

http://www.dnforum.com/f4/computer-com-simplified-chinese-thread-106721.html

Back then there wasn't any available data about IDN Domains nothing more than phishing info, & perhaps how people in other countries are going to steal trademarks that are translated etc. In otherwords nothing remotely about the real use of them.

I'm not starting to to pick fights, now that data is available...

What do you guys really think about IDN Domains...

I'd really like to know the opinions of those who thought we'd all go broke, or IDNs would never be accepted...

I mean Microsoft Japan just bought close to 80 IDN Domains at the end of March...

let's discuss this shall we... Some of us are only IDNers now but I'd like to hear from other members.. This also is not meant to sway members. Because it was easy pickings 9 months ago... So it's not exactly easy to find good domains like we did... I'll be honest.

 

[NameYourself]

I think they have potential but there are still MANY questions as to how much value they will have and which extensions would have which value. What is the status on DNAME mapping? Is it still looking like .COM is the best bet?

Please also expand on Microsoft Japan's holdings of IDN domains. What kind did they register? What extension did they choose?

 

[Olney]

They registered all of their product names in dot jp & dot com in Japanese.
Now Microsoft is the reason why IDNs aren't used yet. They are the actually reason they finally will be in use because their browser wasn't IDN compatible.
(edited) I just noticed that there is a list on another forum of phishing IDN domains that might have been registered by Microsoft. The Domains I'm talking about are the real Japanese names of each product & if I remember a few more.. (sorry I won't publish a list)

I did notice that people are waiting for this mapping issue to be solved but I think like this.

1. Wait for the mapping issue to be resolved next year.

OR

2. Buy up all the best Premium Japanese domains in dot com & dot jp I can personally find & soon.

As far is saying dot com is "better" it depends on the situation. As the Japan side of it I would say never think that a dot jp is going to worth less than a dot com.

 

[NameYourself]

As far is saying dot com is "better" it depends on the situation. As the Japan side of it I would say never think that a dot jp is going to worth less than a dot com.

Even if DNAME mapping takes effect and .COM becomes the universal IDN.jp, IDN.cn, etc? What kind of impact would this have on existent IDN ccTLDs?

 

[Olney]

What impact will it have?
Well from being in SEO in Japan I'll tell you my IDNs now are already ranking for their keywords in MSN, Yahoo, & Google Japan.
They also show up natively too.

Any changes to the system will not make IDNs invalid domains. Most of us see existing domains will most likely to IDN.IDN

The whole IDN system was not made to give dot com an advantage.