In my opinion Nominet made a right balls up from the start and they are trying to put right what they done wrong in the 1st place.
How comes all the major countries other than international extensions like .com, .net, .org have only 2 letters ex. .de, .es, .jp etc etc and a great country like ours ends up with .co.uk??
Didn't .co.uk look like a mess from the very start...and now after all theses years they finally decide to release .uk which they should of done from the very start.
Doesn't seem right either than anyone can register .co.uk domains if you are a non UK resident or have no business/company ties here..So surely thats gotta change anyway.
I don't think the searchers will care as .uk to them looks much better than .co.uk anyway.
Looks like Nominet have made up their mind already and the survey thing is just a formality and it will not be that long before when you are searching in one of the search engines the .uk will be in all the results with the .coms .
Nominet have stated many times how great an advantage it was for branding and peoples awareness and trust to have the .co.uk over a .com or other extension...but that was before the possibilty of the .uk coming up. How long before that changes and they then to push for the .uk over a .co.uk? Not long i bet.
Who does this really have the worst effect on anyway? Not the business owner as much if he gets 1st refusal on the .uk domain as all it costs him is 20 bucks to have the .uk and then they just redirect to their .co.uk or vice versa after time. If the existing owner is not allowed the chance at 1st registration stage then if its a brand or established business and someone else is registering it just for finacial gain to flip then i'm sure they could appeal to get it back.
Surely its going to be the big portfolio holders who take the biggest hit as they are the ones that can hold 1,000s of domains at anyone time...So what do they do? Spend millions to protect the ones they already have if they get the opportunity? And surely it must devalue the .co.uk domain.
Lets face it, a vast amount of domains are held by domainers which Nominet has never really liked and are either parked for profit or held to be flipped for massive profit anyway so why should the existing holder of a .co.uk get 1st refusal to begin with? What so they can just park more domains for profit? Doesn't seem right anyway...
Fair enough if you are a legimate business holder and the domain is an established brand and you can prove that, then you should have the right to get it. But just to park or sell on for a massive profit like we all have done at sometime?
Looks like the times ahead is going to be tough for existing domain traders with existing portfolios and especially in tandam with what looks like a harsh penalty now for EMDs in Google, but on the flip side though this will almost certainly be a good time soon for new domainers that missed the boat as there is surely going to be some great domains that become available to register for a bargain of just £20 instead of the £100s or £1000s that it can currently cost.
