Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Are there enough domains for the world?

I read the Verisign quarterly domain report last night, and a few things struck me.

The first was the total number of domains registered, which is 162 million. On a global context, this doesn't seem like many, it would work out to one domain for every second American, and none for the rest of the world. Yet, it seems like it's getting harder to register quality names. I also read recently that there are only about 500,000 words in the english language. Then there's also french, spanish, german, chinese, etc.

Year over year the total growth was 26%, and country code domain growth alone was 33%. At this rate, what will be left for people to register in 5 years? Will good domains only be available in the aftermarket?

It seems like the trend will be for people to take their country code domain if the .com isn't available, and .cn has surpassed .net in total registrations.

India has only 4% internet penetration. What will happen to the domain market when countries like this reach 25%, 50% and higher internet use?

What will your young kids or grandkids be able to register when the time comes for them to need a domain?

1 comment:

  1. That's what good ol' .NAME and .BIZ are for, of course!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!