With the new TLD applications list now published and the ICANN public meeting only a week away we’ll be talking to Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Top Level Domain Holdings.
Antony Van Couvering is CEO of Top Level Domain Holdings who have applied for 70 new TLDs!
So who is Antony Van Couvering?
His LinkedIn profile has the following:
Currently CEO of Top Level Domain Holdings (TLDH), created to invest in and operate new top-level domains. Also CEO of Minds + Machines, a wholly owned subsidiary of TLDH, which provides registry services to top-level domains.
I grew up in the U.S. and overseas (Africa, Europe, Middle East). I have a degree in comparative literature from Columbia; I waited tables in New York and managed a restaurant in Paris; I started an art-book publishing house out of Paris and New York; I edited and helped publish works by Joseph Campbell, a scholar of myth and religion, before and after his death, with HarperCollins. Then I found the Internet…
So what kind of questions should we ask him?
Please let us know via the comments :)
About the Author: Michele Neylon
This week on the technology.ie we’ll be talking to @antonyvc What should we ask him? http://t.co/5daKwcd0
RT @blacknight: This week on the technology.ie we’ll be talking to @antonyvc What should we ask him? http://t.co/5daKwcd0
So I have a question for Antony, as a registrar : Will tldh offer bundle accreditations to their 92 tlds ? (if they get them all).
As registrar, it makes sense to pass only one test, fill in one account, and sign only one contract.
Thanks in advance for your reply Antony,
Good to see questions coming in for @antonyvc http://t.co/SD5dNfel
Got any questions about domains / new tlds? Our guest this week on technology.ie is @antonyvc http://t.co/BwwHpyZU
Does it not feel like having so many extensions will cheapen the whole domain industry? I mean we’re big fans of the .me extension and we do a fair bit to market that. Suddenly we’re going to have the likes of .sale … so businessname.sale will be required to protect your brand. We’ll also need to have businessname.review businessname.store and so on (I’ve not checked your intentions with those domains just picking a few from your list of applications) I’m just wondering where it ends. The big buzz a few months back was with .XXX and protect your brand so so there suddenly isn’t an adult website with your name. You’ll also be diluting your content across multiple sites now. That’s just three and I’m sure there are a 100+ that a business would need to protect their brand properly. This is no longer just a case of a spend of 100 euro a year to protect your brand on the main extensions. (com / net / org and a few ccTLDs) We also don’t know the prices of all these extensions just yet. Not to mention how they’ll end up faring in the search engines.
I’d like to hear Antony’s thoughts on the closed registry proposals from Amazon, Fairwinds clients, Google and others.
What are the chances these applications will get approved?
Any mechanisms in place that could derail those applications?
Specifically, does he think the GAC will have any advice regarding these types of applications and their potential affect on the global public interest?
Is there anything community members who oppose this type of registry model can do to help prevent these namespaces from being closed off?
Michele and Conn,
Thanks very much for the enjoyable podcast. I hope everyone got their questions answered.
Antony
P.S. I don’t know where you got that terrifying photo of me. Please destroy it.
not sure where you found that terrifying photo of me!
Antony
If you can send us a link to a better photo we’ll happily swap them out :)
Thanks for being our guest – hopefully the show will be out in the next day or so
See you in Prague
Michele