Sometimes a catchy title or phrase grabs your attention...this one obviosly did, only it is not a ruse unlike what may become the biggest every in domain name history! There is a new player that has been quietly dominating domain sales as the fastest launched cctld of all time during and after the sunrise period. The .ME tld has taken the world by storm with sales surpassing the 135,000 mark for registrations. Tens of millions have been invested and the lion’s share being done in the United States and not Montenegro. English has quickly become the dominant language of the tld. All seemed well…until now. Immediately following the sunrise period, many investors and end users embraced the flag of truth and goodness for a tld dedicated to social networking and personalized business uses. Has a ruse been sprung? Google, not being involved in the launch, being the largest search platform in the world, apparently has no current plans for releasing a change to the Geographic Targeting that .COM and .Org have come to benefit by. Unfortunately very few, if any, domain investors ever thought to consider how Google would treat a ccTld sold with a new twist from the norm. A domainer posted an interesting thread and received a response stated by JohnMu, a Google employee in the Google Webmaster Help Forum, “Alas, .me is a country-code top level domain as defined by ICANN. While it's possible that we will re-evaluate the decision to treat it differently from the way it was defined, I would not count on it for the time being.†–Source: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=68b276634193b9bf00045dc2e2893053&hl=en Money down the drain? This very well could be the biggest ruse in domain name history! How can one ignore something the people have embraced? Why would they want to? I hope this not to be the case for long. Ultimately, Google will be the only one who can answer that. Your help is needed today…now. Please read on. The 3rd Party Pitch: “Because .ME is about YOU! .ME has incredible potential for Internet users world-wide. Think about it, with a .ME domain, the Internet will, quite simply, be all about YOU. For the first time in Internet history, domain names are essentially personal. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world, initially in English followed by localized and standards compliant International Domain Names in, for example, Spanish, Italian, and Montenegrin.†(Source: http://www.domain.me) Although various registrars picked up on this, I will offer them a pass in this article and leave things with the source. With some examples of how serious investors and end users have taken this great tld: Domain Final Bid Date.Me $70,000 Love.Me $32,500 Ask.Me $20,000 Kiss.Me $20,000 Buy.Me $17,500 Loan.Me $15,000 Marry.Me $12,000 Show.Me $10,000 Watch.Me $7,500 Play.Me $7,500 Rent.Me $6,000 (Source: http://www.domain.me/index.php?page=12&news=103) “It’s not only an amazing domain to actually get into and have a site there, but even if you’re just investing in some names, this is the site to get into,†said Roland LaPlante, Afilias’ chief marketing officer. (Source: www.philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2008/10/20/story13.html) Conclusion: The purpose of this opinion article is to motivate you to save your investment by contacting Google for a reprieve on their blanket policy of automatically assigning the .ME tld to Montenegro, when clearly the investors have made thier opinions loud and clear. I hope and pray Google will reconsider thier position in the very near future and allow for a Geo Targeting of the domain. Please request they open the Geographic Target editing to include .ME and allow it to do what it was sold as: A World-wide personalized domain extension. Considering the historical approach by Google has been to absorb or integrate all things “social†on the web, this should be a no-brainer for them. Apparently all they need is 100,000 domain name owners to convince them. You will be the next. Please contact Google in any of these following ways and let them know you want this change: http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py http://www.slashdot.org Get Slashdotted!!! Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 Phone: +1 650-253-0000 Fax: +1 650-253-0001 Mail…Phone…Fax Your opinions. Please Do It Now!!!
Not the sales pitch...or the fact that it worked oh so well. But since this is the fastest growing launch tld in history, that they make concessions to the majority (United States English domain investors) and allow for Geo Targeting. The Sales pitch was just that...nothing more and yes, many have been duped by it if thier policies remain unchanged. This is absolutely an uphill battle that I hope starts here...now...today. Millions of dollars are at stake with many investors and end users out here. My investment is minimal, but enough to write this opinion article.
Why? You want Google to support monopolization of a foreign domain by english language users, just because some people were stupid enough to get fooled into thinking it would be big? They should leave it as is, let everyone abandon it, then let Montenegrins take it back.
I am the WirePro that posted the very long comment on the google groups article, and I am proud to say that I can now post that things have changed! http://www.namemon.com/component/content/article/43-search-engines/64-google-permits-geo-target-of-me-domains