Xconomy.com did an article on the new gtlds and had a focus on Donuts and they got quotes from Richard Tindal a co-founder and COO. Again I think some of the quotes are way off base. Tindal talks about Donuts pricing being higher because it is a superior product. No new gtld currently is superior to .com that is just patently false and this type of stuff is what hurts the new gtlds in discussions and debates imo. Tindal does have the good sense to admit that awareness of the new gtlds is still very low.
Donuts, of course, is bullish on the value of the new domains, more broadly. So much so that its pricing for the new names is two to four times higher than similar domain names ending in the standard-issue .com, .net, and .org. (So, anywhere from $30 to $50 a year for typical new gTLD Web addresses versus around $10 for the legacy names.)
“We’ve priced the product higher quite simply because we think it’s significantly superior,” Tindal says. “We think of this product as three or four times better than the equivalent .com, and at this point, the market is telling us we’re right. They’re paying those higher prices for our superior product.”
Tindal goes on to talk about Google and their purchase of .App. He said he believes Google will accelerate acceptance of the new gtld domains. The only problem with that is .APP is looking like it is going to be very restrictive.
“The more successful Google is with .app, then the more successful we are with our TLDs, because they all reinforce each other—the usage of them and the promotion of them,” Tindal says. “When Google pushes .app, when Amazon pushes .free, it helps our product as well because it sends the message to the entire market and legitimizes them all.”
While $25 million seems like a lot of money, Tindal believes Google will “get tremendous value out of it over the coming years,” likely by doing more than just selling .app Web addresses. “Our expectation is that they’re going to bundle that in some way with tools and other services for the app developer community,” Tindal.
Read the full article on Xconomy
