Why New TLDs Don't Matter by John Levine

The effect of new ICANN’s recent rule change that will allow for new TLDs is addressed in this article on Circle ID by John Levine. Levine says “that almost without exception, the new TLDs created since 2000 have been utter failures. Other than perhaps .cat and .mobi.”
“TLDs stopped being important about the time ICANN started.”
“One of the oft cited examples of groups who would benefit from a new TLD is small language communities, that it would somehow make an online community possible. In reality, while it’s important that their writing system is included in Unicode, and that there be display fonts and input methods available for browsers and MUAs, the domains don’t matter because nobody’s going to type a domain more than once. After that, the sites are going to be bookmarked and the e-mail addresses will be in the address books.”
To read all of John Levine’s posting, see www.circleid.com/posts/89710_why_new_tlds_dont_matter/.