Companies that are worried about competitive advantage should reexamine their own domain name strategies.
An awful lot of big brands are speaking out against the prospect of “closed generic” top level domains, such as .cloud and .book.
That may be good news for owners of high quality second level domains, if or when these complaining companies “get” domain names.
They’re spending a lot of time fighting the prospect of companies getting a competitive advantage by controlling a top level domain, yet they sit by idly as a true competitive advantage — owning a high quality second level .com domain — sits right in front of their face.
The UK IT Association (UKITA), Open Forum Europe, Intellect and the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) have all spoken out against a closed .cloud domain.
Yet where were their constituent companies when cloud.com sat on the auction block for over a year?
Owning Cloud.com gives a company an immediate competitive advantage.
The domain was publicly for sale for a year before VMOps . The domain helped the company get a foothold in the market and it was acquired by Citrix for $200 million.
Owning .cloud and keeping it closed?
It may give the owner some competitive advantage. We don’t know. (It certainly won’t give the owner market power, as some companies are suggesting.)
@Domains says
All good points. Competing companies aren’t going to stand by and watch as one of them gets exclusive use of .genericproductname
It might get more people thinking about how valuable genericproductname.com is.
This could also delay many more gtld’s from launching, because many are .genericproductnames
Domo Sapiens says
There is only one cloud.com
CITRIX owns it now…
they moved fast….
I don’t understand your point…?
respectfully…
here is the series of events:
http://sullysblog.com/Cloud-Peder-Ulander
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218452/What_is_Cloud.com_worth_
” For one, having a top level domain brings instant traffic, awareness and, in many cases, credibility in a market place.”
from the previous owners…