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back to article Fancy a .dev domain? They were $12,500 a pop from Google. Now, $1,000. Soon, $17.50. And you may want one

Google has launched a new internet extension specifically for developers but if you want to get a good name, you're going to have to pay for it. The .dev top-level domain already has some big names drummed up to give it some credibility, including GitHub, Slack, CloudFlare and Salesforce. And the company has started a "Dutch …

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  1. Nate Amsden

    so confusing

    so many top level domains.. I got on a support call recently and they said go to <vendorname>.support. I asked them to confirm as I expected something longer like <vendorname>.support.somethingelse.[some well known TLD]. But nope the actual TLD domain was .support.

    I guess I must admit I have yet to encounter many of these TLDs in real world usage.

    Per the .dev stuff I assume if people use .dev and host their own internal DNS they could override the behavior ? Provided of course the browser isn't sending DNS requests directly to the interwebs. I don't use Chrome nor do I use .dev so not sure, but am curious.

    7 0 Reply
    1. JohnFen
      Reply Icon

      Re: so confusing

      "I assume if people use .dev and host their own internal DNS they could override the behavior ?"

      Yes, you absolutely can, but it's really easy to mess it up and even easier to forget that you did it years from now.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: so confusing

        "host their own internal DNS they could override the behavior ?"

        Yep, its often referred to as Split Brain DNS, internally a domain could resolve to one address, externally it would be something else - It's quite common. I've seen it used to force additional security measures and separate out features. But it can often cause a lot of user confusion, as you get different behaviours depending upon locations.

        0 0 Reply
    2. macjules
      Reply Icon
      Gimp

      Re: so confusing

      Would be happy if they also have .stage or .uat

      I tried to find any domains with .crap, but they all seem to belong to Apple ...

      1 3 Reply
      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Devil

        Re: so confusing

        '.crap' - you hit on a good idea for "guaranteed will never be a TLD" TLDs.

        Now which one should I pick... (run it in parallel with my LAN's DNS, which has used '.local' for nearly 2 decades on Micro-shaft's recommendation, at least until I decide to switch it over for realz)

        basically, pick the one thing that political correctness will ALWAYS demand not be used. well, you'd think ".local" would be like that 20 years ago, right?

        /me calls for an RFC that explicitly stats which TLDs will NEVER be used, and declare them usable by private address spaces.

        0 0 Reply
        1. jake Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: so confusing

          Way ahead of you., bob. See RFC 2606.

          3 1 Reply
          1. david 12 Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: so confusing

            Way behind us jake. The four TLD's defined by 2606 are

            .test

            .example

            .invalid and

            .localhost

            ... which all have defined domains making them unsuitable for .local domains

            1 2 Reply
    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Re: so confusing

      there REALLY DOES need to be a designated TLD for LANs. '.local" used to be the one to use until it was taken over by mDNS [without a lot of warning, in fact]. ".localhost" is by definition a 127/8 domain.

      As for '.dev' as long as it works with 'letsencrypt.org' and self-signed certs, should be fine, right?

      /me points out that back in the late 90's, Microsoft was RECOMMENDING that you use '.local' with windows domains... and my FreeBSD-based DNS has been using a '.local' domain for the LAN since I moved my server to a FreeBSD server, back in the early noughties...

      /me still uses '.local' as I don't give a rip about mDNS and just disable it for certain linux distros so it won't cause me trouble

      post-note - did a tiny bit of digging, found this 'unofficial' list that's not generally recognized...

      https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762#appendix-G

      0 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: so confusing

        "there REALLY DOES need to be a designated TLD for LANs. '.local" used to be the one to use until it was taken over by mDNS [without a lot of warning, in fact]. ".localhost" is by definition a 127/8 domain."

        There's corp, home and mail ?

        https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/12/icann_corp_home_mail_gtlds/

        Ok, not designated but near as dammit....

        1 0 Reply
  2. Mage Silver badge

    HTTPS?

    A $10 domain and $99 pa "unlimited" hosting includes HTTPS etc.

    All these new TLDs are a scam, a racket.

    12 1 Reply
    1. thegroucho
      Reply Icon

      Re: HTTPS?

      I must be missing something.

      Gandi (I haven't checked anyone else) - "€16.81 per year; Gandi offers a 1 year standard certificate, even if you don't want to be hosted by us."

      Depending on requirements you can get a free tier AWS account and use serverless Lambda or t2.micro EC2 server instance.

      So where are the $99 pa coming from?

      1 0 Reply
      1. rmason
        Reply Icon

        Re: HTTPS?

        depends on the URL and how valuable they think it "should" be.

        "ourcompanyname".dev is $99

        "ourgroupname".dev is in the £500+ with an option to pre register/queue jump (it's not completely clear if this means you get it automatically though!) at 2.4k

        0 0 Reply
        1. Cederic Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: HTTPS?

          Surely "yourgroupname".dev is in the 'Entirely unnecessary unless some other idiot registers it in which case a quick trademark related email snaffles it for free' bracket.

          0 0 Reply
    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Black Helicopters

      Re: HTTPS?

      ack on the "tollbooth" part - of COURSE the IANA and ICANN "recommend" using ONLY registered TLDs, even for your LAN's RFC1918 address space, and (apparently) no self-signed certs for HTTPS, either.

      (next they'll somehow invalidate 'letsencrypt.org' if they get a chance, and follow the money on why)

      *SCAM* and *TOLLBOOTH* indeed...

      0 0 Reply
  3. Mage Silver badge

    ICANN, which prides itself in never being wrong despite any evidence to the contrary

    Yes, I know the UN took over the Victorian era ITU and the UN does stupid stuff. Just look who the members are and the permanent security council are. But remind me why ICANN is a better idea?

    0 9 Reply
    1. Snorlax Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: ICANN, which prides itself in never being wrong despite any evidence to the contrary

      Sarcasm bruh. ICANN isn’t the ‘better idea’, ever.

      11 0 Reply
    2. Elregouk
      Reply Icon

      Re: ICANN, which prides itself in never being wrong despite any evidence to the contrary

      You must be American

      8 4 Reply
    3. Carpet Deal 'em
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: ICANN, which prides itself in never being wrong despite any evidence to the contrary

      While ICANN has problems with corruption and pride, it still knows what it's doing; the ITU, on the other hand, has proven multiple times it has no idea how this "internet" thingamabob works. We could subsume ICANN whole into the UN as a top-level agency, but it not developing any new problems would be a best-case scenario: if there manages to be any actual "oversight", it'll be at the behest of countries that are actively opposed to everything the internet's supposed to stand for.

      1 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: ICANN, which prides itself in never being wrong despite any evidence to the contrary

        "[...] it'll be at the behest of countries that are actively opposed to everything the internet's supposed to stand for."

        IIRC there have been human rights leaderships assigned to countries who are considered major offenders against same.

        A bit like Trump appointing heads of government agencies. Often the people nominated have a track record in opposing what those agencies are supposed to regulate or promote.

        2 0 Reply
  4. Khaptain Silver badge

    Commercial bollocks

    TLD have long lost their appeal ever since Google gained dominance of the web search.

    TLDs once held a certain relevance, now it's just pure commercial bollocks. Regardless of the site behind the name, I can n basically buy a *.*. commercial_bollocks domain and hosting whatever the hell I please.

    It's great business for a very small majority and yet another opportunity for sellers/resellers and scammers.

    Tim Berbers Lee must be turning in his "bunker"...... ( He's not dead so I presume that he is bunkered down somewhere hoping to lay low from the shit flying around the shit storm that the Interwebs have become )...

    18 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Commercial bollocks

      "Tim Berbers Lee must be turning in his "bunker"...... ( He's not dead so I presume that he is bunkered down somewhere"

      Try CERN ;)

      8 0 Reply
      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Commercial bollocks

        ... spinning in his large collider?

        4 0 Reply
      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Commercial bollocks

        "Try CERN ;)"

        Well, if you need to be in a bunker, you could pick a worse place :-)

        0 0 Reply

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    Spam coming soon

    When the domain costs $1,000+ you see no spam domains but when you get down to the $17 level we'll all be getting spam and fishing expeditions on a regular basis. And when that happens I'll blacklist the entire TDL at the mail server. There's a silver lining to every "cloud" ...

    3 3 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. eldakka
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Spam coming soon

        Hi grandad, nice rant but it’s axtually TLD

        Pro tip: When pointing out others typo's, probably don't include any typo's in your post pointing out the typo.

        11 3 Reply
        1. julian abbs
          Reply Icon

          Re: Spam coming soon

          I assume you mean typos?

          Unless you are talking about something belonging to typo, or something typo is doing...

          12 0 Reply
          1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
            Reply Icon
            Happy

            Re: Spam coming soon

            But eldakka wasn't the one annoyingly picking up on a simple typo.

            Ergo, your reply to him/her is as obnoxious as the original post he/she was replying to.

            And yes, you would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for us meddling kids.

            0 2 Reply
          2. MCMLXV
            Reply Icon

            Re: Spam coming soon

            There's an apostrophe missing, too: others'

            3 0 Reply
            1. John Robson Silver badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: Spam coming soon

              There's an apostrophe missing, too: others'

              No, it's just on holiday, one word over.

              0 2 Reply
  6. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Joke

    daffyd.gay

    ideal for a certain resident of the Welsh town of Llanddewi Brefi.

    12 1 Reply
    1. Robert Moore
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: daffyd.gay

      It is so sad that there are no other .gay people in his village.

      9 0 Reply
      1. Korev Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Re: daffyd.gay

        Behave you two! It's not a .gaym

        3 0 Reply
        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: daffyd.gay

          That would be a tremendously lucrative domain because all your users would have to replace .gay with .LGT then LGBT then LGBTQ then LGBTQI then LGBTQI2

          The sex health clinic here at the university has just put up posters everywhere saying it now supports "2 spirit" people in addition to the previous range of acronyms. I don't know if this has helped anyone ho felt excluded from LGBTQI but it has meant a lot of money for the ad agency

          3 2 Reply
          1. Rudolph Hucker the Third
            Reply Icon

            Re: daffyd.gay

            I didn't get where I am today without having to look up what all these acronyms mean.

            My activist-daughter tells me LGBTTIQQ2S is the very latest thing to be, if you are "woke".

            Wake me up before you go-go.

            2 0 Reply
            1. bombastic bob Silver badge
              Reply Icon
              Trollface

              Re: daffyd.gay

              you'd have to use ".alphabet" for all of that, but I think Google's owning company will want that one...

              4 0 Reply
          2. kain preacher
            Reply Icon

            Re: daffyd.gay

            You do kn ow the term 2 spirit is an old term right ? Native Americans have long held the concept of more than two genders.l

            1 0 Reply
            1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: daffyd.gay

              >You do kn ow the term 2 spirit is an old term right ?

              I might like to see some evidence dating back before somebody in a social sciences dept decided that they could prove they were more woke by inventing it.

              I would also like to see the number of people who had previously felt excluded from the clinic because their label wasn't included and whether the money spent on the ads could have been spent on more staff at the centre.

              >Native Americans have long held the concept of more than two genders.l

              But what about those who have the concept of an irrational number of genders, don't they get a label ?

              6 2 Reply
              1. kain preacher
                Reply Icon

                Re: daffyd.gay

                https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/pbs-documentary-explores-navajo-belief-in-four-genders-r3dVknNYZEenpPY95jd1ig/

                Don;t know what your hostility against trans people is .

                0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: daffyd.gay

      How about

      onlyoneinthevillage.gay ?

      2 0 Reply
  7. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Linux

    .dev! .dev! .dev!

    steven-ballmer.dev

    7 3 Reply
    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: .dev! .dev! .dev!

      I remember seeing him do that. I think it was the PDC for Win '95, in Dec of 1993 [they rented Disneyland that time, and Penn & Teller did a show sponsored by Motorola for their PPC processors].

      0 0 Reply
  8. jake Silver badge

    But I've had a couple dev domains for over three decades!

    They are dev.jake.TLD1, dev.jake.TLD2, dev.jake.TLD3 and etc.

    The gookids could do the same ... dev.google.com, dev.google.net, and etc.

    Why the fuck anybody would think that purchasing extra domains when they already have a .com (or a .co.uk or whatever) is a good idea is beyond me. This is pure marketing bullshit in it's worst form. And the suckers are falling for it in droves.

    10 2 Reply
    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: But I've had a couple dev domains for over three decades!

      The reason for registering them is to stop other people from registering them and pretending to be you.

      3 1 Reply

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. JohnFen

    Not remotely compelling

    "And to be fair to Google, it has actually come up with a compelling reason: in-built security."

    I don't find that compelling at all. And, although I'm a developer, I don't see any professional or status-related reason why I'd want a .dev, either. The whole thing seems like a waste of money to me.

    7 0 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. tin 2

    GitHub, Slack, CloudFlare and Salesforce....

    ...who all already own their own (properly spelt) .com domains?

    Weird. Just pay for another domain name for a laugh? or just to say you have it? how far does that go? .devs, .developer, .devops, .company, .gaff, .whatever?

    5 0 Reply
  11. david 12 Silver badge

    dot gay is for gays?

    ... and dot dev is for deviants?

    14 1 Reply
    1. Korev Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Gimp

      Re: dot gay is for gays?

      Takes one to know one ;)

      2 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: dot gay is for gays?

      Same thing.

      0 1 Reply
  12. Rob Davis

    dot theatre ( .theatre ) rip off

    Dot theatre names are a rip off at around 800 pounds for ANY name not just "popular".

    There is .theater which is much cheaper but some may prefer the British English variant.

    Why is this?

    Money can be the tight in the theatre sector. The high cost of the domain denies smaller community theatres the esteem of a stand out name.

    ICANN should regulate but they won't - I contacted them. Spineless. The regulation should be that domain applicants should be affiliated with a recognised industry body first, e.g. guild of small theatres and then that upper price limit should be capped to be affordable. Because using price as an excuse to deter squatting is rubbish.

    2 0 Reply
    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      You forgot the reason for them

      The ICANN board didn't own enough yachts, so needed to raise a lot of cash.

      11 0 Reply
  13. Warm Braw

    Some devs warrant a premium

    Had a quick check and there is a wide variation in the price you'll get charged annually for a .dev domain name based on its perceived value.

    For example, theregister.dev will cost £975 (less tomorrow...) and £10pa thereafter, whereas register.dev would cost you £320pa in perpetuity.

    3 0 Reply
  14. Starace
    Devil

    Smells like a protection racket

    Acquire TLD

    Modify stuff so it's treated in a particularly special way regardless of existing norms

    Offer domains for sale at inflated (and apparently semi-random) prices

    ???

    Profit!

    Sounds like a serious misuse of dominance in the browser market to me.

    7 0 Reply
    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      Re: Smells like a protection racket

      you forgot...

      create shadow company to 'domain squat' deep pocket targets

      yeah, NOBODY is gonna 'domain squat' any '.dev' names, right?

      1 0 Reply
  15. Jamie Jones Silver badge
    Boffin

    If only....

    If only we had a better name <-> address mapping service - then this wouldn't be an issue.

    I have a suggestion:

    A hierarchic system - use a specific character as a separate in the hierarchical tree... I don't know, maybe a '>', or a '-'. Or better still, a '.' - yes, let's go with '.'

    Then we can have a limitless number of addresses, (just like with postal addresses, we won't have to keep inventing new countries to sustain domain availability)

    As an added bonus to having well organised addresses, we could add the ability for different levels of the hierarchy to be delegated to other servers, spreading the load, and removing the single point of failure.

    We could call it "Hierarchical address system" (HAS), or "Hierarchical name system" (HNS), or maybe "domain name system" (DNS).

    Any thoughts? Would this work?

    1 1 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: If only....

        Good point!

        I think we're onto a winner here!

        0 1 Reply
    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Re: If only....

      already do-able. I set up a customer mirror site (for development) once, using site.customer.mydomain.tld [fill in the blanks] on my local LAN, since I have a domain pointing at its DNS. it worked really well for proof of concept stuff, and was easy to develop for. It even had an entry for google's API for various things that were already a part of the site [but of course I had to re-do them because it was a different URL, but no biggee, since it WAS a URL}.

      So yeah you can do "sort of" subdomains on your own, from your own "domain.tld", as long as you have easy access to the name server.

      the A records kinda look like normal ones...

      (in the appropriate file)

      domain.tld IN SOA (name server info)

      ...

      thing A ip.add.re.ss

      the.thing A ip.add.re.ss

      do.the.thing A ip.add.re.ss

      and so on. works for me.

      yeah "call it Domain Name System (DNS)" <-- was that snark?

      0 1 Reply
      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: If only....

        Um... The whole post was snark!

        Still, it wasn't me who downvoted you.

        0 0 Reply
  16. Eek

    I'm confused as https://domains.google/tld/dev/ says I have to wait until 4pm on the 28th to get my domain for just the annual fee..

    0 0 Reply
  17. Giles C Silver badge

    The best one I heard is that nccgroup in the uk, bought .trust for themselves. As far as I am aware nobody else is allowed to use it.

    Could be wrong but it is pretty audacious to have a tld for one company.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Gronk
      Reply Icon

      Several companies have their own TLD.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains

      1 0 Reply
      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        And none of them seem to actually use them. For example, I visit https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/ to manage my credit card, not something.amex .

        1 0 Reply
  18. Rudolph Hucker the Third
    Facepalm

    Just wondering, what would happen if you didn't bother with a trick-scheme domain name, and just told everyone to use your fixed IP address?

    0 0 Reply
    1. Roland6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      what would happen if you didn't bother with a trick-scheme domain name, and j just told everyone to use your fixed IP address?

      Which IP address were you thinking of: IPv4 or IPv6 or both?

      Yes, you could go back to the pre-DNS days of the Internet, but why would you want to?

      1 0 Reply
    2. katrinab Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Then my reverse proxy server wouldn't be able to redirect the request to the relevant internal server. It is also possible to have multiple websites on the same server, I don't do this, but lots of people do.

      1 0 Reply
  19. The Pi Man

    Meh...

    Domain names are still a thing? I google stuff and click on the link that comes up....

    1 1 Reply
    1. Tomato Krill
      Reply Icon

      Re: Meh...

      And how do you get to Google, genius?

      1 3 Reply
  20. mptBrain

    So I have to now be a commercial .gay instead of a community .gay? They're going to probably charge us through the roof for this, since we apparently have more disposable income and all that jazz...

    1 0 Reply
    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Like the £71 charge to attend Manchester Pride?

      Anyway, gay men earn a bit less than straight men, but boyfriends are cheaper than girlfriends which makes up for it. If you are any other letter in the LGBT alphabet, you are almost certainly worse off.

      1 0 Reply

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