The news so far: Google acquired ABC.XYZ, a “domain hack” that perhaps the Campbell Soup Company would also appreciate.
Outside of this deal, the substance is about how Google created an umbrella corporation for itself, called Alphabet, and will thus give its founders new roles, away from Google.
It’s like reshuffling the company and giving it a new name. Oh, and a domain, that ends in .XYZ.
The reshuffling sent Google stock 5% higher after hours yesterday, settling at 4.27% at today’s closing. That’s great news for Larry Page and Co., because their worth increased by several billion dollars.
The real question is, how much of this corporate magic truly affects domains, investors, gTLDs and .XYZ in particular.
By raising awareness to the .XYZ “extension”, Google has definitely piqued the interest of common folks that have never heard of anything else beyond com/net/org, let alone .XYZ.
In that sense, a first encounter with an alternate gTLD was made by several million people, who might or might not be savvy enough to research this opportunity further.
The ball is in the possession of domain Registries, to prepare, package, and deliver marketing campaigns that appeal to end users that would seek out and register domains in alternative gTLDs.
At the moment, existing .XYZ domains have not received any particular infusion or increase in value just because Google acquired a single domain name.
Dot .XYZ remains a hiccup in the domain chart, with tens or hundreds of thousands of domains registered via a controversial promotion by Network Solutions, last year.
If that single incident had not existed, perhaps we’d be marveling at the ability of a “random” gTLD to achieve registrations exceeding one million; alas, that number should be reduced to 750k currently, due to the ones that are in a drop cycle.
There’s no doubt that Daniel Negari’s chips in the domain industry increased, all thanks to this move by Google. It might lead to other big things, eventually, and some speculate that an acquisition of the company by Google isn’t too farfetched.
Personally, I don’t think that any company acquired by Google – or Yahoo, or Microsoft – lived long enough to celebrate some form of independent growth; most were shut down within 18 to 36 months.
In that sense, I’d hate to see Negari’s vision of an “XYZ generation” disappear.
At the same time, I don’t own and don’t plan to own any .XYZ domains, simply because my branding focus requires that keyword and gTLD form a single entity with a specific meaning. And with that in mind, Google might have just acquired the only .XYZ domain that really makes sense.
I agree that the keyword and gTLD should make sense together, and it’s hard to do that with .XYZ. I haven’t bought a ton of new gtld’s but the ones I have make sense as a two or three word phrase.
Still this Google news of using a .xyz is pretty big for a new gtld, and at the least is creating awareness that 100’s of new gtld’s are out there, and if Google is using one …..
Agreed. ABC.xyz is very nearly “the only .XYZ domain that really makes sense.”
Rob – I tried to give a fair and balanced analysis of this move by Google.
In my opinion, there is no change, unless the Registries of any gTLD bust a move to promote the very assets they spent millions to acquire via ICANN. Awareness alone does not create revenue.
Is it just me? .xyz I would never want to own one of these. Would you really advertise wine.xyz if you had a wine business? I just don’t get it, it seems like one of the worst new gTLD extensions, but obviously Google choose to use it in some capacity, although it doesn’t sound like they will be marketing it whatsoever.
Let’s not forget that most .XYZ domains are $1 or free registrations used by spammers. It’s not like the extension is about to become the next .com because Google has acquired a .XYZ for its parent company’s website.
Thousands of Internet users, if not millions, will be exposed to this parcel of Internet called .xyz. These Internet users are also consumers and business owners. This type of exposure can only have a positive effect in creating awareness and demand for this piece of Internet real estate called .xyz. And where there is increased demand there is always an increase in prices. And to say that good one word generic names in the .xyz extension cannot be used successfully for branding purposes just doesn’t make sense.
Patrick – As with anything viral, exposure alone does not deliver a “payload.” 😉 Those heavily vested in .XYZ must take a deep breath and face the current reality, or create one themselves. And this is the status for any gTLD, regardless. XYZ has had plenty of exposure, through interviews etc. along with the TV show reference. The current registration numbers don’t reflect a major adoption of it by consumers and business owners. For this to change, one really needs to up their game to propaganda machine levels. Dot com adoption is deeply rooted.
Here’s what this did do. This recent move by Google made people worldwide aware of .xyz and also have now made the Chinese aware of the .xyz numerics if anything does come of all this in the future and Google starts to actively promote this extension. If they don’t then I agree-it’s a one-off.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will any successful gTLD. Wired.com called the URL killer. That article alone is a ton of exposure. I beg to differ that exposure doesn’t lead to demand and increased prices, because that is the way the cycle works. Any domain investor having good .xyz domains should at least get 5 percent of the same .com, right now.
I think some of these work brilliantly. Especially the verbs. They’re the killers.
Get.xyz // Buy.xyz (not mine I must add).
Patrick – That’s a flawed strategy right there, that an XYZ keyword finds use in place of an existing .com. The beauty of gTLDs lies in their ability – or lack thereof, as in the case of XYZ – to form meaningful pairs with the keyword. I don’t think that you can actually sell many XYZ domains in the open market right now at prices even close to 1% of the matching .com.
.xyz is a difficult gTLD b/c of the lack of useful hacks. Certain words seem to possibly fit such as literature.xyz, reading.xyz, songwriting.xyz… But others are strictly branding plays with limited usefulness.
Google will want alpha.bet
Will be their new address. Big Plus is they won’t have to worry about ABC coming after them.
“Larry Page said the name Alphabet was chosen for two reasons. It represents language, “the core of how we index with Google search”, and because Alpha-bet means “investment return above benchmark, which we strive…”
—————
New gtlds will pay a percentage of their traffic to .com willingly or not!
“the leasing company’s website – http://www.alphabet.com – struggled to initially cope with traffic after Google announced the new parent company’s name, with people mistakenly thinking the car leasing site was something to do with the tech company.”
——————
Arco,
That’s exactly what I was saying with my wine.xyz example. WTF does xyz mean to anyone? It’s never really been used in advertising and marketing before on a major scale. I would rather have phoenix.wine or even wine.us. .xyz has a long way to go to even being in the same ballpark as .com, If I had a business, I would take wine.net / wine.org / wine.us / wine.info / wine.biz / wine.co / wine.io and many other gtld’s before I would settle for wine.xyz. All of these other extensions are more recognizable and have millions of websites in use and thousands and thousands of verified sales.
Can you use wine.xyz ? yes, but is that the best choice for a business who is extremely late to the domain game or just starting up? I don’t think so.
I thought of pro.xyz (proxies?) as a good hack to get, but too late!
I don’t have any problem with .xyz, just new domain and new possibilities. Why websites using .xyz should have any problems competing against .com, .net etc ? I don’t see any valid reasons.
As far as SEO goes domain name doesn’t matter. Social media? Actually, I see big opportunities in promoting .xyz domains over promoting old .coms and similar. To make .xyz works people will have to do some job first, and certainly not everyone will be able to do this (and that’s good).
Another thing, .com stands for commercial and this is actually a bit outdated approach in XXI century internet, internet that is now all about human relationships and interaction. .com is boring as hell, would never pay money for wine.com, right away I would take wine.xyz and use that tld to my advantage and crash competition.
@Andrew,
If you “would never pay money for wine.com”, then you might want to rethink your sense of domain quality, market value, and utility. Whatever your opinion of .XYZ, I’m afraid that statement about seeing no value in Wine.com is weird and extreme enough to undercut the credibility of your viewpoint overall.
Gotta love the haters, clearly , Joseph Peterson you’re on a few placing moaning about .xyz, get over it. No one knows if .xyz or any other new TLD will be a winner, google helped raise awareness of new TLD’s in general. Of course most .com investors don’t like new TLD’s, I doubt .com value will decrease anytime soon but these new tld’s give smaller businesses who don’t want to pay silly prices for .com’ the chance to get the name they want.
Here is a fact, if someone is searching online, they will click on the top 5 results, if a .xyz is in those results it’ll get clicks. It’s hard to believe for some of you, but in most countries outside the US , the ccTLD will be preferred, if the company wants to go global, then yes, a .com is preferred, many newer start ups use .io then move up to the .com once they have grown.
Time will sort the wheat from the chaff as to regards to what new TLD’s last the test of time. Indeed seeing more of the new tld’s rank will help people accept them quicker.
I’m afraid I don’ t get why some of you have such an issue with .xyz. It’s “agnostic”, which is what might make it worthwhile.
(WTF does xyz mean to anyone? EXACTLY the point!)
A lot of web searchers still think of .com as commercial, .net as techie, and .org as organization, right? I would lump .io in the techie category, and .info and .biz kinda speak for themselves.
The other new extensions (.club, .attorney, etc.) all have built in meaning, which may or may not influence how people initially judge the website. If they see .club they may skip reading the domain name because they are simply not interested in a “club”.
In other words, they are evaluating the “type” of website rather than the keywords and meaning in the domain name.
So, having a extension that is more or less meaningless *might* make the visitor focus on the domain name itself rather than what “type” of site the extension represents. I actually think it might raise the curiosity level of many who encounter it.
And, it sure beats being forced to clump 3 or 4 words together and prefixing/suffixing with meaningless numbers and/or letters just to get one of the top extensions.
I think the aversion to .xyz I’m reading here is simply personal preference (“I don’t like it because it looks dumb to me”) rather than rational analysis.
Wally – Because even .net and .org stand for something, such as network and organization. XYZ is a made up ackronym of “generation X, Y and Z.”
Curiosity isn’t enough to sustain a reason for such domain registrations, and despite recent coverage, ABC.XYZ remains the sole reference to XYZ domains, by a company (Google) known for the nuttiness of its top managers.
That, combined with the free and near free (~$1) promotions for XYZ make the extension not appealing to invest in. Feel free to register WallyDay.XYZ, otherwise.
Funny how you focused on the “curiosity” comment. Good spin.
So, how many laypeople will think “oh, this is one of those awful ‘generationx,y,z’ websites” when they see the extension? Not too many I’d wager.
And, GoDaddy used to have numerous $1 website promotions for many of the top level domains.
Wally – Waiting for you to switch over to WallyDay.XYZ, if the shoe fits, you must wear it. Old domainer proverb.
@Martin,
What exactly is the “it” I am meant to “get over”?