Dot-co is not a dot-com typo

Trademarks get love with new domain launch

Colombia's dot-co domain name will be opened for general availability this summer, and the company behind the move wants you to know it's not just a .com typo.

.CO Internet, a joint venture between Colombia's Arcelandia and American registry Neustar, hopes to quickly make millions with dot-co domain names, based on the string's obvious semantic value rather than the fact that it looks a lot like a dot-com.

"The goal in all of this is to create a very large name-space for all the millions of businesses starting up around the world on a monthly basis,” said chief executive Juan Diego Calle. "We realise there may be some concerns about typos, but in my opinion that's a blip on the radar."

The Colombian name-space has previously been quite heavily regulated and only 27,000 names have been registered. It's taken ten years for the country to loosen its grip and try to squeeze the asset for its full value.

"We expect to have millions of registrations in the first few years," Calle said.

Ten registrars have been hand-picked for launch. While .CO Internet is not disclosing its registry fees, they are believed to be at least double those for dot-com. Retail prices are in the $20 to $30 range.

Domain squatters could have licked their lips at the prospect of lots of lovely typo traffic from fat-fingered web users. According to Alexa, domain such as ebay.co and amazon.co rank in the top 500,000 searched-for web sites in the world, despite the fact that they do not even exist.

When Cameroon realised the value of its .cm namespace four years ago, it decided to 'wild-card' the entire domain to monetise typo traffic. Its track record on cybersquatting is also dubious (visit ebay.cm for an example).

But not only has .CO Internet ruled against wild-carding dot-co, it has also put in place significant measures to make sure brands are protected.

While not governed by any formal relationship with ICANN, the company has borrowed ideas ICANN has been working on for years and put in place some of the most stringent trademark restrictions of any top-level domain.