(Newswire.net — May 26, 2016) — For years, it looked like we would never have .ECO domains out in the public. The fight started nearly 10 years ago with Al Gore and Dot ECO LLC fuelling the campaign to allow ecologically friendly businesses to register the domain extension that quickly communicates what the business is about at a glance.
Today, their dreams have come to reality as .ECO domains are now about to go into public hands before the end of this year.
There is still some degree of uncertainty as to who will control the process of selling the domain to the general public. Usually, domains go to auction as soon as ICANN agrees.
However, analysts believe that Dot Eco LLC and other alliances that have been working towards the release of the domain will be given control of the process. The alliances have been against a general auction. One of such Alliances is the Big Room Alliance which features a very strong contingency of environmental sustainability activists. Members of the Alliance include grass roots eco groups from China, India and Brazil, WWF, Greenpeace, United Nations and more. Regardless of the route taken by ICANN, we suspect that these groups would be the early adopters of .ECO domains.
Why an auction isn’t approved by the alliances
According to domians4less domain name specialists “the alliance is against an auction as it could see legitimate eco-friendly businesses priced out of the domains purchase process by bigger companies. Many of such companies have the financial clout to make sure that prime domain names like water.eco or food.eco will not be purchased by smaller names, some of whom may have more legitimate eco-friendly businesses than the larger corporations. Looking beyond pricing, the alliance is more concerned about legitimate and ethical use of the extension most importantly.”
How can smaller environmentally friendly businesses get .ECO domain names?
Irrespective of the route taken by ICANN towards the disbursing of .ECO domain names, all cadres of businesses can get the name by simply registering their chosen name with their preferred provider. There is of course the possibility that initially preferred names may no longer be available especially following an auction but substitutes can still be registered. Pricing for the names will be as competitive as other established extensions such as .com and .org.
The control of .ECO domain extension may be a big issue right now but the most important thing right now is that affected businesses can now finally register an extension they can identify with.