Apple Applies for '.apple' Domain Name Suffix

[clickerman]

If I went out and got .ipad or .iphone or .icloud how much do you think Apple would pay me for them?

 

[Relativistic]

Yes, it breaks DNS in a bad way, moving a whole lot of load up to the root instead of where it belongs down in the hierarchy. It also makes the whole hierarchy system obsolete, turning DNS into a "keyword" system. It's a big cash grab.

Load on the root servers is a non issue. All a dns server does is memcpy stuff from one address to another. A low spec server can handle 30000 qps which is ~2.6 billion queries per day. There are 13 beefy root clusters (each has collection of anycasted servers) running the entire system.

I completely agree though that it is a desperate money grab.

 

[hchung]

I agree with those saying it's a dumb move on ICANN's part...

Think of the confusion it could cause even outside of the web browser.
Incoming request from an organize crime group trying to register for *.exe in 3....2....1..... ?

 

[StrudelTurnover]

Seems more like a way to shake a few hundred grand a piece from big brands.

Businesses that joined the Internet late, and found desirable ".com" names taken, would have alternatives.

Desireable .com names have also sold for $185,000. Alternatives indeed. *moustachetwirl*

 

[mrxak]

I'd call ICANN dumb, but I'm pretty sure they know exactly what they're doing, and it's not in the interest of the Internet or anyone on it.

Perhaps Apple will use .apple internally. That's what I'd probably do. Apple can put all of their company email and HR servers and whatnot on .apple. I really doubt Apple will use the TLD for any marketing. <product>.com works just fine, is shorter, and customers know what .com means.

 

[mrsir2009]

Surely that would be apple/ipad and apple/iphone ? Why a subdomain?

Also, this ties in nicely with the next version of Safari getting a unified search/url bar (ie. one box instead of 2 separate ones). If you were to type in 'apple' you'd go straight to their site, instead of over to google with the results of a search for the word "apple".

What if you wanted to Google 'Apple'?

 

[brdeveloper]

Looks like a source of revenue for ICANN and a way to privatize lots on the internet, as these domain suffixes won't cost the same as standard .com ones.

That is, if you are big and rich, you'll have your own ".your_company". If you're a startup, you'll be a mere dot com.

 

[Navdakilla]

Such stupidity these domains. So now we have:

WWW.APPLE.APPLE

lolz

 

[thornguy]

This is a great security feature ICANN is starting.
Someone getting a link in an email to go to myaccount.chase will know that it's accurate and not a scam link that's really myaccount.chasse since scammers can't afford and ICANN won't allow non-valid business names to be a TLD.

 

[bawbac]

Wow, Apple found another creative way to data mine their sheep.

 

[scottsjack]

OMG Apple applies for .apple?

Front page news if ever there was some.

 

[gnasher729]

If I went out and got .ipad or .iphone or .icloud how much do you think Apple would pay me for them?

Nothing. You would end up paying the registration fees, your lawyers, and lose the name, because you would be acting in bad faith.

 

[Hexiii]

http://www.com is a website, yes. And of course Apple can have http://www.apple if they win the .apple TLD.

but that's just www.www.com, you don't have to type www.apple.com either, just apple.com

 

[gnasher729]

He's not insulting anyone, he's continuing the fruit metaphors started in the post he replied to. His edit was aimed at people that would reply just like you did. Seems you still weren't getting it when he explained it though.

Some people just like to see hate where there is none I guess.

"Rotten Apple" is insulting. Do you claim otherwise? Seriously?

And believe me, I recognize a joke. There wasn't one. Insults are not funny. And _you_ fell straight into his trap.

 

[sjwk]

I don't have a Chrome installation handy, I'm curious, I never noticed how Chrome treats it. My internal domain uses a custom TLD (not available on the Internet of course), I could give this a try and see how Google treats it.

Ditto on this. I've found Chrome sometimes - not always, but more than just the odd occasion - doesn't even try to resolve and connect to the internal hosts but just assumes it's a search term and trundles off to Google.

That said, this may be because I only have my primary DNS pointing to my server that resolves my TLD with secondary DNS pointing to our official DNS server as a fallback so maybe it only does the search thing if it is talking to the secondary server.

Steve.

 

[iHEARTcartoons]

So what happens when someone tries to register dirtywhores.apple? Does Apple have final say and control over their sector of the internet?

 

[rmwebs]

Hope they secure '.app'.
Huge potential for developers especially with .app.

Imagine something like airbnb.app or instagram.app as a domain to directly find these app pages/downloads etc.

Also, remember they may not use these domain names, rather may be securing them from other domain sitters.

They wont. They didnt apply for .app, as the article explains. DirectI, Amazon and Affilias have applied for .app, so only one of those three will get it (and its more likely to be Affilias or DirectI than Amazon).

----------

but that's just www.www.com, you don't have to type www.apple.com either, just apple.com

What he was implying is that IF apple are granted ownership to the '.apple' suffix, they can setup a domain as 'www.apple'. So it would work as 'www.www.apple.com' and 'www.apple' without a .com

That being said, nobody types 'www.' anymore as there is no need unless the site is run by an idiot. Funnily enough, a bunch of UK government sites only work if you use 'www.' - go figure

----------

If I went out and got .ipad or .iphone or .icloud how much do you think Apple would pay me for them?

You'd need about $100,000 to apply for it, and even then there is no guarantee you'll get it. In fact you wont get it as its a well known trademark.

----------

Not anymore. That'll break now that there are unlimited root domains available.

This is purely to make money, not to keep any sort of order on the DNS system. Which is what I thought the naming organizations were supposed to do: Keep some semblance of order in the naming structure of the internet.

No. It really wont.

When you type in 'amazon' or 'google', your browser automatically searches Google and does an I'm feeling lucky. For browsers that dont do this, they first check for a local domain record on your machine, and when it doesn't find that, tries slapping a .com on the end of what you typed.

The Root DNS servers dont have 'shortcuts' for people who dont add the extension. This will have zero effect on that.

----------

ICANN is nuts to be offering this. Comon words as TLDs just reverts the Internet to some kind of AOL like keyword system. Proper DNS hierarchy wasn't broken, this breaks it if anything. The root-servers are going to get hit hard when TLDs multiply.

Way to destroy a good system in the name of profit.

Whilst I do 100% agree with you, it creates zero extra overhead on the root servers. They store billions of domain records, a few more makes no difference to them at all. The extension really doesn't matter, they literally just store text.

 

[weckart]

Maybe for their eventual entry into the produce market:

grannysmith.apple
fuji.apple
reddelicious.apple

You forgot the most obvious one - mcintosh.apple

 

[haravikk]

What would the main website be called? apple.apple seems a bit weird

 

[PeterQVenkman]

I want www.dot.dot

 

[bananas]

Should Apple's application be approved, Internet users could find themselves accessing product pages for the iPhone and iPad at iphone.apple and ipad.apple respectively, simplifying advertising and making the URLs shorter and easier to remember.

I think it's more likely that we will see URLs more like the current ones, but with .com omitted. Eg. developer.apple and store.apple/ipad and icloud.apple. Using product names as sub domains might be confusing to customers and not appropriate usage in my opinion.

 

[brdeveloper]

I want www.dot.dot

me.too

 

[bananas]

If typing website. actually worked, that might be cool.

That could be done in Safari. Opera used to have /. as a shortcut for slashdot.org. But I don't think Apple would do it.

 

[D.T.]

You forgot the most obvious one - mcintosh.apple

Hahaha, I did indeed Nice catch

 

[KnightWRX]

Whilst I do 100% agree with you, it creates zero extra overhead on the root servers. They store billions of domain records, a few more makes no difference to them at all. The extension really doesn't matter, they literally just store text.

Root servers don't store billions of domain records. You're thinking of ccTLD servers or GTLD servers. And frankly, even those don't store "billions" of records (except maybe .com's a.gtld-servers.net and company). Adding TLDs moves the load up from the ccTLD and GTLD servers back to the Root servers.

Look, it's easy to see. Let's just ask a.root-servers.net what it knows about apple.com :

$ dig apple.com @a.root-servers.net

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3 <<>> apple.com @a.root-servers.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 51777
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 14
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;apple.com.			IN	A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
com.			172800	IN	NS	g.gtld-servers.net.
com.			172800	IN	NS	i.gtld-servers.net.
com.			172800	IN	NS	k.gtld-servers.net.

Yep, it basically knows .com. is hosted in the X.gtld-servers.net servers. It doesn't actually know of apple.com or its delegated DNS. If we then ask one of the GTLD servers, then we get a proper answer about who has authority for apple.com (notice we don't actually get any answers about subdomains or address records or CNAMEs from the gtld server, only authority information) :

$ dig apple.com @a.gtld-servers.net

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3 <<>> apple.com @a.gtld-servers.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 28186
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 6, ADDITIONAL: 6
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;apple.com.			IN	A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
apple.com.		172800	IN	NS	nserver2.apple.com.
apple.com.		172800	IN	NS	nserver.euro.apple.com.

Same for apple.ca really, the root servers only point us back to .ca ccTLD servers :

$ dig apple.ca @a.root-servers.net

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3 <<>> apple.ca @a.root-servers.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 63819
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 10, ADDITIONAL: 14
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;apple.ca.			IN	A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
ca.			172800	IN	NS	tld.isc-sns.net.
ca.			172800	IN	NS	k.ca-servers.ca.
ca.			172800	IN	NS	c.ca-servers.ca.

This nice hierarchy works, distributes the load accross multiple servers and limits requests to the root and the different TLD servers (notice those TTLs on .com. and .ca. authority information, 48 hours, so essentially, your local resolver server will store the information for every .com. request for 48 hours and not have to ask the root servers again for all the requests from all its users about .com. again for that period).

Now imagine if instead of 200-300 TLDs there were 3000. 30000. Yes, before you ask, I'm somewhat of a DNS geek, having been heavily involved in an ISP in a past life and in domain hosting. I dabble less in it these days, but I still follow it and the system hasn't changed for quite a while.