It has been ten years since the first of the custom TLDs began their sunrise on the road to general availability. Since then, hundreds of specialized domains have become available for registration, but have they transformed the industry as predicted?
Radix CEO Sandeep Ramchandani was recently on the Domain Name Wire podcast to discuss the challenges that new TLDs have had over the last decade and what opportunities still lie ahead. According Sandeep, the expectation that these new domains would overhaul or completely upend the existing order was completely unrealistic. They have certainly added some additional options for businesses looking to obtain a particular domain where the .com has been taken already, but they have remained secondary to the established mainstays of .com and .net.
However, Sandeep does point out that the ongoing establishment of new retail-based TLDs has been a boon for the ecommerce market. Domains like .store and .shop have come into regular use for a number of businesses both small and large. Those domains that have seen more widespread success are those that had a close brand association on the part of the registry, but their biggest competition still remains the .com domain.
