Thread: Is Your Domain Relevant to India & Indians???

Originally Posted by EuropeanDomainCentre

You are absolutely right. Local Indians would prefer the TLD in their local language. With ICANN´s new decision to allow countries to create non-latin TLDs, I think we will see 11 new TLDs soon - one for each script, and co.in and .in will be secondary, used only for brand protection and by Internet users outside India. I believe .中国 will be the biggest ccTLD inside the next years and the colonized .cn will be secondary

Christopher Hofman
europeandomaincentre.com/pages/news/newsletters/will_be_bigger_than_cn

A certain amount of confusion from your blog. idn.cn & idn.中国 are in fact the same as the owners of the idn.cn also own not only the simplified Chinese version but also the Traditional Chinese version. For example I own a website 搞笑.cn and also own 搞笑.中国,搞笑.中國 - If the Chinese characters for Simplified & Traditional are different I own those versions also.

idn.中国 can already be accessed in China and very soon worldwide. I do agree with your premise that .中国 will be huge but then again I have spent the last year or so building up a portfolio of them so maybe I am biased.

Originally Posted by wot

However, .in has more options for interpretation, Indiana, Indonesia, Income etc, and more generally relevant Internet.

Much as I am fan of .co.in for India, .in has more scope and can be, and is,used for other options-very versatile.

I've taken a screenshot of this and made it my screensaver.

Never thought I'd hear this coming from you.

Originally Posted by EuropeanDomainCentre

Local Indians would prefer the TLD in their local language. With ICANN´s new decision to allow countries to create non-latin TLDs, I think we will see 11 new TLDs soon - one for each script, and co.in and .in will be secondary, used only for brand protection and by Internet users outside India.

And you base these assumptions on the fact that the majority of the internet users in the country are language users I presume? I'll say just the opposite and in fact this has been borne out till date and will be forseeable future - .in is king in India, abroad too for that matter, .co.in will be #2 and .भारत might have 2-5% marketshare in 2020, if that.

Yes, Indians will still patronize .in in the english version for the most part. English is already an established language for many reasons, and the govt even uses it for its websites already,so i don't see .in weakening in the near future. Strong keywords/generic names will still gain in value in the .in and .co.in TLDs. How much? i'm not sure, but something tells me .co.ins should not be underestimated.

There's a clear reason for people buying and selling .in domains not related to India. The reason is ccTLD's are the gTLD's of the future and we're starting to see this process. The tendency to open registrations to everyone will lead to an internationalization of ccTLD's, so that they will be used as just another alternative to .com, especially when a ccTLD can be easily given a 'meaning'. .in is a perfect example: many people don't even know it's the India's ccTLD but build their websites on it because they think stands as an abbreviation of 'Internet' or 'information'. Another (much more) notable example is .tv.

Originally Posted by mwzd

I've taken a screenshot of this and made it my screensaver.

Never thought I'd hear this coming from you.

I'm a realist and I do own a few .in - believe it or not.

My traffic and most of my sales still come from .co.in though.

I'm just kidding wot, you know I have nothing but respect for you as well as your opinion and views.

I'm sure most of your traffic and sales come from .co.in, its the generics you hold, very little to do with the tld tbh.

I'm changing our investment strategy a bit from what it was, but still no place for Indian IDNs in it for now. Cheers!

Coming from India, I fully support the views expressed by Samit here

Originally Posted by mwzd

And you base these assumptions on the fact that the majority of the internet users in the country are language users I presume? I'll say just the opposite and in fact this has been borne out till date and will be forseeable future - .in is king in India, abroad too for that matter, .co.in will be #2 and .भारत might have 2-5% marketshare in 2020, if that.

It is a fact that India is a land of diverse culture and languages. There are many languages and English is not yet the language used by masses despite its huge popularity. It gives an impression that IDN's may be popular in India and overtake .IN or .co.in.

But almost 100% of the upper layer of society, which has access to Internet, is well versed with English and uses it for using Internet. And English is the medium of education in India.

Even my mother tongue is Hindi, but when it comes to using computers, I cannot write a single word in Hindi, despite having access to translation and transliteration software.

In my view, it will take a huge time for the IDN's to offer any serious competition to .IN and .co.in.

My 2 cents.