DISQUS

Ronan Cremin · 3 years ago

In response to the link above that refers to the Techdirt article about the .mobi domain, readers should take a look at the dotMobi blog, where we correct some inacurracies in this article:

http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/2006/08/mobileonly_doma.html

Also, in the interest of keeping the discussion fair and balanced, we have a section on our blog to address some common misconceptions about the .mobi domain:

http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/misconceptions/index.html

Mike Masnick · 3 years ago

dotmobi's response is more of the same from them. They take Carlo's words and twist them around to create a strawman, but don't do much to answer the essential point: why does anyone actually *need* a .mobi address?

The folks there always claim that the reason is content doesn't look good on a mobile phone.

That doesn't explain what good .mobi is. You can make content look good on a mobile phone, and you can pretty easily set the content to display better by device based on the user-agent. This way no one has to wonder if a site has a mobile address or not.

There's simply no reason to pay extra (on an ongoing basis) for this.

Also, over time, the ability for mobile devices to take existing web content and display it nicely in a mobile environment has only improved (greatly!). Do the folks at dotmobi really believe it won't improve even more?

As for their point about the W3C's support, that's name dropping, but doesn't answer the essential question of whether having a separate internet for mobile content is a dangerous trend (a point on which Tim Berners-Lee agrees with us, if you want name dropping).

As for the heart of the claim concerning the "money grab" aspect of the premium names, you can judge for yourself. The company claims that it's holding back these names so as to avoid an "inequitable" solution. According to them, inequitable is "first come, first serve." Equitable is "highest bidder."

Perhaps they mean well, but it's hard to see that as anything but a money grab.

Our real issue with dotmobi has mainly been their continued efforts to make it sound like you *need* to buy a domain from them to do mobile content, or that their domain will somehow rescue or save mobile content. Nothing can be further from the truth. The company has not demonstrated what value they provide.

Anyway, for Carlo's own response to Neil's post, plus (oooh bonus!) added problems with dotmobi's new "emulator" effort, check out his writeup over at MobHappy:

http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2006/08/24/whats-mobi-playing-at-now/

David Ulevitch · 3 years ago

At this point in the game ICANN is doing a disservice to net users by ignoring serious issues and allowing distructive business to ruin the DNS and domain name space. Domainers and other abusive "land-grabbers" are making the Internet a far more annoying place to be on.

Has ICANN ever reprimanded a registrar? Not that I can think of. The absolute waste that is .mobi is just an example of ICANN ignoring real problems.

That said, I still have faith that ICANN might be able to turn around.