.uk consequences

[Systreg]

@ Anthony, on that link I posted above, one of the answers said:

Q. Will .co.uk registrants feel compelled to buy the .uk equivalent of their web address (or vice versa)?


A. No one is compelled to do anything – shorter domains are about increasing choice and we are committed to keeping and investing in our current domains.

However, the concern that businesses would feel compelled to buy the example.uk equivalent of their example.co.uk website in order to prevent anyone else from having it – ‘defensive registration’ – is one we take seriously and we explored the intentions of a sample of our customers to help us consider this further.

38% said they are not likely to register example.uk.

16% said they would register the example.uk, drop their current primary domain and transition to example.uk within a year (3% say they’d do this over a longer timeframe)

20% said they would add example.uk to their repertoire, and transition to example.uk as their primary domain within a year (10% would do this over a longer timeframe)

12% said they plan to register, add example.uk to their repertoire, but wouldn’t use example.uk.

While this suggested strong demand, it also suggested some customers would choose to spend a period holding (and paying for) example.uk on top of their existing domain. This contributed to our decision to offer the 5-year free reservation period, and to keep the wholesale price low.

It is also relevant to note here that if someone has rights in a name, and someone else registers a domain name similar to that name and takes unfair advantage of those rights, Nominet offers a Dispute Resolution Service (DRS). The DRS is based on free, confidential mediation, with decisions by experts used to break any deadlock.

 

[anthony]

Cheers.

16-19% is a fair chunk of domains if those figures pan out!

 

[Murray]

16% said they would register the example.uk, drop their current primary domain and transition to example.uk within a year (3% say they’d do this over a longer timeframe)

16% are really going to screw themselves over then.

 

[Systreg]

It would be interesting to know the number of businesses they approached to get that 16% number, was it hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, I'm guessing a few hundred at most?

Add in to that the 38% who said they are not likely to register example.uk, that would be 54% of businesses dropping or not registering the .uk version of their business name, crazy really for the sake of a maximum of £30 incl vat for a 10 year registration to protect their interests.

 

[jimmc]

What if a .co.uk drops, there is a .org.uk in place but a US company owns the .com

Who gets it??

 

[Sam]

Taking the matter one step further, one wonders if many .co.uk domains will be foolishly dropped by their owners once they've established their corresponding .uk domain?

Yes seen comments from companys on the news of .UK with a few saying they will drop there .co.uk

 

[jasman]

Taking the matter one step further, one wonders if many .co.uk domains will be foolishly dropped by their owners once they've established their corresponding .uk domain?

I wouldn't expect much of value to become available. Any company that has shelled out for a premium .co.uk clearly has thought about the value of domains and probably would be wary of competitors getting hold of it, especially given that it only costs about £3 or £4 per year to keep the .co.uk

But if the majority of big brands moved from .co.uk to .uk, many small businesses would follow suit and there would probably be quite a few company names of no interest to the rest of us like johnsmithplumbing.co.uk etc becoming available as the small business owner switches to .uk and presumes no-one would be interested in the .co.uk.

I wouldn't pay too much heed to the Nominet statistic of 16% who would register the .uk and drop the .co.uk. Giving an off -the-cuff answer for a survey is one thing but when faced with the decision to renew or not, I imagine they will give it more thought and consider the consequences of a competitor getting hold of it. Especially if we start to hear stories in the news of 'domain speculator villains' registering .co.uk domains after companies switch to the respective .uks. Also one can't really trust statistics from Nominet on this issue as they clearly had an agenda to launch .uk from the start.