Internet to get three new domains

The internet will very probably soon have three new top-level domains - .eu, .travel and .jobs - the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers has announced.

ICANN last week authorized the delegation of .eu as a country-code domain (ccTLD), at the request of the European Union, after seven years of EU politicking.

EU-based organizations will be able to register their names under .eu from the fourth quarter of this year, via registrars that partner with EurID vzw, the Belgium-based company the EU has appointed as the .eu registry.

Currently, European domain owners can only register names under specific national ccTLDs, such as .uk or .de. The EU itself hosts its web site at eu.int , under the little-used TLD reserved for international treaty organizations.

The .eu domain will now be entered into the domain name system's root server system. EurID plans to build out its channel and software until the fourth quarter, when it will operate a "sunrise period" for trademark holders to secure their .eu domains.

"Having .eu in the root sets the green light for the launch of .eu" EURid general manager, Marc Van Wesemael, said in a statement. "Over the next few months we will be working very hard on the final preparations with the aim of launching the .eu sunrise period later this year."

The EU has been working on getting .eu up and running since at least 1998. The idea is to give companies an address that can reflect pan-European presence and help with cross-border trade within the union.

Multiple levels of EU legislative and executive approval were required. For most of that time, a willing ICANN has been twiddling its thumbs waiting, having approved the domain in principle in September 2000.

Also late last week, ICANN said it is close to approving .jobs and .travel, two private ventures that were submitted as "sponsored" TLDs, or sTLDs, which can be used by members of certain classes of organization.

ICANN has completed negotiating contracts with Employ Media LLC, which wants to run .jobs, and with Tralliance Corp, which wants to run .travel. The ICANN board now needs to approve the deals, which will probably happen next week.

In both cases, the companies are sponsored by an industry association and plan to restrict their customer bases to a specific community of potential registrants supposedly underserved by existing domain names.

Tralliance plans to have a participating travel industry associations or "authentication providers" verifying that would-be registrants are legitimate entities in travel. The market is broadly defined to include everything from airlines to restaurants.

The .jobs domain is sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management and will be restricted to "persons engaged in human resource management practices". The criteria for being recognized as such are quite flexible.

But .jobs will be marketed as a domain that every company with an HR department needs. Employ Media gives exxon.jobs and sony.jobs as examples. On the web, the domains would point to hiring microsites within exxon.com and sony.com, it appears.

But for many firms, the introduction of two new TLDs will together be little more than another minor trademark protection headache to add to the thousands of protective registrations they already have to pay for every year.

Because there is some level of authentication, there will be a reduced risk of some chancer registering microsoft.jobs or disney.travel for a lark, so many firms may decide these new TLDs can be safely ignored.

Pricing is not yet available, but an indication may come from the fees that ICANN intends to levy on the two new registries - $2 per year for every domain registration, transfer or renewal that they log.

This compares to the $0.75 transactions charge ICANN plans to levy on the next .net registry operator, which translates to a wholesale registry price in the $6 range and retail prices ranging from $6 to $30.

These kinds of registry transaction fees are new and controversial. Some say that ICANN, which works under contract with the US Department of Commerce, is levying an unfair "tax" on domain name holders, though ICANN does not use those terms.

Google to Acquire Urchin

Google Inc. yesterday announced that it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a California based web analytics company.

According to Google, it plans to make these tools available to web site owners and marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is anticipated to close before the end of April.

Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and marketers to better understand their users' experiences, optimize content and track marketing performance and is currently being used by MonsterCommerce, Accoona.com, Symantec Corporation and even the US House of Representatives, among others.

"We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users' experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google. "This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products."

Although the financial terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, Google has reportedly paid $30 Million for the acquisition (via BattelleMedia) and fans have already started speculating whether the acquisition could be used to build a new outsourced service, using Urchin's On Demand technology, or to enhance existing Ad Sense publisher tools.

Yahoo! Introduces Search Developer Network

Yahoo! Inc., an internet portal and web hosting provider, yesterday announced the launch of the Yahoo! Search Developer Network. (developer.yahoo.com)

New service provides developers with access to web service application programming interfaces (APIs) to Yahoo! search products and Overture's API programs. Additionally, it provides application developers with an application showcase, a weblog, mailing lists and discussion groups dedicated to each API and 'wiki' to ask questions and share ideas. The interface also includes spelling correction in search query, news search and access to its search engine marketing API program through Overture.

"We have worked closely with the development community to create a new program designed to stimulate open discussion, experimentation and development of new search applications," said Dr. David Ku, Director of engineering, Yahoo! Search. "We believe that it is critical to provide the development community with both the search APIs and interactive resources to help foster the discovery of innovative applications leveraging Yahoo! Search Technology."

Google Unveils a New 'Movie:' Operator

Google Inc., recently announced that it has created a new 'movie:' operator on its web search engine, allowing users to search for movie-related information.

The operator enables to find information faster and more easily, whether for titles or actors, director or genre, famous lines or obscure plot details. For example a search for 'movie: Tom Hanks talking to a volleyball' - will result in 'Cast Away'.

It also enables users to find theaters and showtimes in particular areas. A search for 'movie: Mountain View, CA', for example, will show what's playing near the Googleplex. It also allows search on 'movies', 'showtimes' or the title of a current film, and top result will be movie-related information for the particular area.

The movie showtimes are also available on Google SMS which is accessbile by sending a text message to 46645 - to look up showtimes for nearby theaters.

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