The word sucks is now a protest word and it s up to people to give it more meaning.
— Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, in a commercial promoting the .sucks domain.
John Berard of Vox Populi, which owns the .sucks generic top-level domain (gTLD), says: We think it can have value for companies, especially in terms of being able to deliver customer service, build customer loyalty, and even R&D. When you look at it that way, $2,499 is well priced. That s right, starting March 30, companies will have the chance to pay Vox Populia $2,499 a year to register a .sucks domain — lucky them. Quartz points out: If they don t, someone else will.
Can you imagine? Starbucks.sucks. Walmart.sucks. Apple.sucks. At least these companies can actually afford to scoop up those domains. But for smaller companies that don t have deep pockets, it could get expensive to try to avoid being targeted.
Most Internet users know about the following top-level domains: .com, .net, .org and more. But all that is so five minutes ago. Hundreds of new gTLDs are popping up after ICANN approved a great Internet real estate expansion, as Michelle Quinn wrote last year. Among them are .app (Google bought it for $25 million), .email, .social, .democrat.
But .sucks is among the most attention-getting and controversial gTLDs. I wrote last year that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va, said .sucks has little or no socially redeeming value, and that he was worried it would lead to a predatory shakedown scheme.
Photo: ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, left, and Kurt Pritz, senior vice president, talk about expanding the number of domain name suffixes during a press conference in London in June 2012. (Associated Press archives)
