I think you're missing the most important point - they allow for competition in a market in which we currently only have a few offerings. The real benefits of more TLDs are those that have yet to be made public or, perhaps, even thought-up. I, for example, have some great ideas, but there's no way I'm going to state them in public, because I want to compete with them! To state them in public would be to hand them over to the existing players in this artificially-scarce market.

ICANN has a mandate to increase competition. Period. What else do you need?

Adding new gTLDs will probably make the new owners of the gTLD a pile of money from speculators, what benefit will there be for internet users?

Unless the gTLDs are very carefully selected there will in reality be less competition not more. Simply because .com will be the only extension worth investing time and efforts in. The more gTLDs are added the faster this will happen.

You're so right.

And, you know, opening a new hamburger stand will probably make money for the hamburger stand owners, but what benefit will there be for lovers of tacos?

Unless hamburger stands are very carefully selected there will in reality be less competition not more. Simply because McDonald's will be the only burger place worth investing time and effort in. The more fast-food joints that are added the faster this will happen.

Is the understanding of a free-market that hard for some people? Apparently so.

In the old days anybody could do like you suggest Chris, and set up their little shop or hamburger place wherever they wanted. Then commerce involved into high streets, then into department stores, then into shopping malls each being an improvement for the end user. Nowadays you can’t put up your burger store in your backyard. This doesn’t mean you can not do business it just means business as a whole functions better within an agreed framework. Nor does it mean there is no competition as stores compete with each other within each mall.

The question being asked here should be “Do we need a new mall next door?”

Now you can argue that there should be no framework and anyone can set up a new mall and the strongest mall will thrive and the others will get boarded up. Just the existence of a new mall though doesn’t guarantee its success, it needs stores and stores need clients/customers/end users. The stores need to see an advantage to move into the mall.

I think your asking the wrong question, rather than asking “Why should the system be allowed to exclude me?” You should be demonstrating how your new mall will be the must have location.

So in the mind of your customers why should they move in? Sell it to me - Why should I move my business and my clients businesses to your new gTLD? “What is the unique value proposition you are offering?

Once permission is granted for a new mall the new owner the left with a difficult decision, should he wait until at the worlds business want to move to his new mall or should he lease it quickly to speculators in the hope that once it becomes popular the big companies will buy up the stores from the speculators.

There is plenty of newly released space coming up to let .eu .us, .in, (maybe .asia)
Will companies, organizations and individuals generate enough demand for even more space?

To add: New TLDs would allow countries (one of the main constituencies of ICANN) to identify themselves better than by their two-letter code. These new TLDs might be full ASCII spellings of the country's preferred name, or they might be IDNs of the country's preferred name in the country's correct spelling.

I disagree with Chris about "competition" as being important. It would be nice, but it also seems hopelessly doomed to over-governance and thus won't ever be useful.

You're right - it won't ever be useful. Neither will technological innovation. I mean really, man can't fly, so why bother investing time and money into trying? We'll never come up with a cure for cancer, so why are we spinning our wheels.

Let's tell everyone willing to invest their own time and money that they're wasting their time and stop them from trying!

To phrase the argument differently, the question is not "why new TLDs", but "why not." In a competitive environment, the only condition that's there for someone to start something new should be that (1) they are willing to risk their money on it, and (2) they don't do damage to the world at large.

If the business model is crazy or the management lousy and the thing fails, tough. Learn how to deal with it.

There's demand - people will pay for them. If there's no downside (and the National Academy Study says there is no downside for any reasonable number per year so long as they are introduced gradually), then that's all we need to know, isn't it?

While the marketer in me knows that CNO and ccTLDs will dominate for some time to come, I broadly agree with Chris in terms of ICANN's remit to increase competition.

However, I would temper that with the warning that unless TLDs are chosen in such a way that their intended/logical purposes don't overlap too much, the average consumer will end up very confused.

For example: the existence of .net and .web might be helpful -- although I'm not even 100% convinced of that given how poorly .biz has provided a realistic alternative to .com. But in any case, adding several near-synonymous suffixes like .www, .website, .internet, .online and .network as well as .net and .web would simply reinforce the primacy of .net for sites seeking such a connotation.

So however you describe the undoubted benefits, it is, I think, important to note that diminishing returns set in beyond a very small number of similar TLDs, and beyond that number very real problems start to appear.

Diminishing returns, perhaps - but that's a business risk, and one I'm willing to take.

Please enumerate those "very real problems" and give an indication of how many TLDs must be added in order to see them.

I suspect I will then offer you a wager that says you're wrong.

Hi Chris. It's not so much a question of how many TLDs, but how visually, phonetically or conceptually similar each new TLD is to existing TLDs.

But are you asking me to delve into the exact reasons why people become confused between character strings that are in some way similar? To discuss why people mistake "president" and "precedent", for example? Or why they confuse strings that have, in addition, vaguely related meanings - eg. insane/inane? If so, sorry... I don't have the required medical training! But we all know it occurs.

It's not easy to give a domain-related example that is likely to have any particular resonance with you, as (1) American experience is almost entirely limited to the gTLDs, and (2) the existing gTLDs are sufficiently distinctive to make such confusion relatively unlikely.

However, in the UK where alternative naming based on subdomains has taken significant hold, there is, I have little doubt, a wider degree of confusion.

Simple example: www.nc.uk.net is a British government website using a Centralnic subdomain. How can there not be some confusion with the "official" .net.uk here?

At one point, someone was even marketing subdomains of the Colombian .uk.co for UK use. But I'll stop now as I'm in danger of laboring the point!

By the way, I think my use of the term "diminishing returns" must have been unclear. I was referring solely to the provision of distinctive and worthwhile alternatives to existing gTLDs. I didn't intend to allude to financial returns.