No, Google you still can't have dotless, one-word domains A surreptitious effort to introduce so-called "dotless domains" – where you type a single word into your browser to reach a website – has been noticed and shot down. Despite an explicit ban on the Google-pushed idea – which would, for example, let you simply type the word "search" and be taken to the internet address https:// …
4-letter words are immensely useful for helping the public navigate the vast reaches of the Internet without confusion. Said words shall be redirected thusly:
crap -> End up at your country's Google
shit -> End up at your country's Microsoft/LinkedIn/Cortana/Tay combo
arse -> End up at Facebook/Zuckercamp
bull -> End up at your country's Parliament (for other chambers, use derived words)
piss -> End up at your Central Bank
smeg -> End up at the White House
dead -> End up at the European Commission
etc..
Enter any string you want, including Unicode, into the browser address / search bar
Browser delimits the arbitrary string and sends it to the DNS
The DNS looks it up and returns the numerical IP address
This could be implemented as proof of concept in a couple of hours with a browser extension and a server pretending to be a DNS (for purposes of demo).
Grandpa's Browser: 'That search engine, the big one, goggles or something?'
DNS: 142.166.12.216
Since the browser address bar is now also a search bar, this is already kinda sorta already essentially done. He who controls the browser can do anything they want. Especially if they also have their own DNS farm.
Google already have their own DNS farm behind: 8.8.8.8 - that what you were alluding to?
Since many (most?) Android devices (or at least Chromecast etc) have that hard-coded they're already doing an insane amount of meta data collection even for those not using their browser/software.
fuzzie "...what you were alluding to?"
Full points.
As mentioned, one word URLs are (effectively) already here.
Type CNN into your browser's address (/search) bar, press enter, and see what happens.
It'll probably even be localized for your convenience.
Google doesn't need anyone's permission. They own a browser, the database, and even a DNS.
They got the 'done that' T-shirt already.
I would like to register the dotless domain localhost, after my new company LocalHost, LLC. We plan to offer complementary MySQL hosting; in fact we will accept any user credentials you choose to submit, just to show you how generous we are.
and i'd like to register the name localdomain
of course, named after my new company LocalDomain GmbH
Both of our new companies are hugely popular these days, almost everyone uses at least one of each of our products, some even more. :)
/humour
In other words, someone tried to write in some contract language that would have allowed a registry to go through a largely unnoticed technical process, decided by ICANN's staff, to pass something that several internet organizations, including the SSAC itself, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the ICANN Board, have all decided poses a threat to the stability of the internet.
Why? Because then the owners of top-level domains such as "search" or "hotel" or "weather" could bypass search engines altogether and have people go direct to their websites from where they could direct them. In other words, millions of dollars worth of traffic annually.
And it could (will) screw up LANs everywhere.
And it could (will) screw up LANs everywhere.
Yep, it will do, in many places, and that brings up a security can of worms..
Basically, such infrastructure is not secure. There should be no way your internal network can be affected by external changes. Organisations whose infrastructure was affected by the verisign 'wildcard A instead of NXDOMAIN' fiasco of a few years ago should have seen it as a wakeup call, but alas...
... you can still use 1-word DNS targets in any browser, provided you control the DNS server (or hosts file) that it's referencing the IP from. This in no way means that browsers are 'allowing you to have 1-word domains', because browsers are not part of the DNS infrastructure. At all.
For example, if you set up your DNS server to recognize https://search/ as 10,10,10,10, then typing 'search' into your browser would point it to 10.10.10.10. This doesn't mean that you've just broken the rules of the internet unless you allow outside queries to it and get someone to add it as a node in the web's DNS forwarding infrastructure. ICANN's ruling here says 'no-one is allowed to do that'. It has nothing much to do with browsers.
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