Web addresses are changing. Have you noticed? We’re no longer limited to the old standards of .com, .gov, .net, and .org. Instead, a cruise through the internet will reveal a bonanza of new options: .yoga, .online, .marketing, .sexy, .buy, .read, .family, to name a few.
Generic top-level domains (gTLD), or the letters that come after the dot, are now for sale. ICANN, the international non-profit organization that coordinates unique web addresses, sells gTLDs to lucky applicants for $185,000 a pop. Why pay such a high price? There are a few reasons.
- Betting on a market need. The growth of the internet has left very few attractive addresses available, and with over 820,000 new websites a day, choices getting bleaker. Google’s new company Alphabet can be found at abc.xyz.
- Preventing fraud. Many businesses are buying their trademark gTLD to help fend off copycat sites which lure customers with almost-the-same addresses and scam for personal info. Barclays can be found at home.barclays, and hundreds of other companies have purchased their namesake gTLD.
As part of our recent rebranding from 2Adaptive to 2A we needed a new url. 2A.com wasn’t available, so we dove down the rabbit hole of new gTLDs and found something not only suitable, but better. 2A.consulting is clean, modern, and specific about what we do. Turns out, we’re in good company.