DotMobi - Yet another TLD !

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Despite resistance from the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners Lee himself, yet another Top Level Domain, ".mobi" (dotMobi) has been created. Dotmobi (.mobi) is a new top-level domain, intended for sites that are designed to be used on cell phones and other mobile devices.

"A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.nintendo.com, the top-level domain is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive)." - Wiki

See a List of current TLDs at Wiki.

Dotmobi sites will be required to have a home page that conforms to the switch on! style guides (also called the .mobi styleguides) which are optimized for access through mobile devices.

mTLD, the official registry operator for the new .mobi domain name is a joint venture funded by a consortium of companies including Hutchison, 3, GSM Association, Ericsson, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse Technologies, TIM, Telefonica Moviles Espana, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.

Tim Berners Lee urged ICANN not to create .mobi Top Level domain explaining how this new top level domain will break the universality of the web. Read the original document here: New Top Level Domains .mobi and .xxx Considered Harmful. However, the market forces seem to have ignored completely the very fundamental concepts that make WWW so universal and kept aside the suggestion of Tim Berners Lee.

Here are a few excerpts from the document:

There are costs in general to creating any new top level domain. There are specific ways in which the ".mobi" breaks the Web architecture of links, and attacks the universality of the Web.

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This domain will have a drastically detrimental effect on the Web. By partitioning the HTTP information space into parts designed for access from mobile access and parts designed (presumably) not for such access, an essential property of the Web is destroyed.

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Dividing the Web into information destined for different devices, or different classes of user, or different classes of information, breaks the Web in a fundamental way.

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I urge ICANN not to create the ".mobi" top level domain.

Links :

  1. [IJ]: Jacobs, I.: Why Using TLDs for Filtering is Ineffective, Harmful, and Unnecessary Public communication. 2004
  2. [TIMBL-TLD] New top level domains considered harmful, Tim Berners-Lee essay

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