Old school, meet new school. (flickr.com/friarsbalsam)

Hey, you know what sounds like a great idea? Giving the juggernaut Amazon any more of a stranglehold on the book business. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Author's Guild, the Association of American Publishers and those poor bastards at Barnes & Noble are all raising hue and cry in opposition to Amazon's attempt to stake out such generic top-level domains as ".book" and ".read," saying it's a threat to competition.

"The potential for abuse seems limitless," wrote Authors Guild president Scott Turow in a letter to ICANN. He apparently restrained himself from adding "for fuck's sake, guys."

Amazon's response: Basically, "Who, little old us?" In a letter to ICANN, the company's senior counsel dismissed the supposed market-moving power of top-level domains:

"Why should a company be able to own 'widget.com' and not '.widget'?" she wrote. "There is no evidence that past 'closed' domains have led to any market power."

Right ... then why bother applying for them? No one knows, which is the kind of thing that fosters outright paranoia in the publishing business. The company's applications for the domain were about as vague as they could be without filing blank sheets of paper:

 Its application for ".app," for example, says that becoming a registry for the domain name will "provide a unique and dedicated platform for Amazon while simultaneously protecting the integrity of its brand and reputation" and also offer "a stable and secure foundation for online communication and interaction."

The jury's still out on whether these top-level domains will matter worth a damn, anyway. You can go to Amazon.com and order basically anything; who wants to fool with a thousand new sites on some new domain?

In fact, we suspect these objections are less about antitrust worries than sheer rage at the idea Amazon could own ".book," which is way too close to the concept of "book" for anyone's comfort.

Like this but with Internet addresses instead of homesteads. (Photo: flickr.com/sergemelki)

Boy oh boy: The list of applicants for ICANN's new top-level domains dropped today, and it looks like Google and Amazon like a lot of the same words.

Things are different from when the world (wide web) was young and no one yet recognized its promise. In those days, you could grab prime real estate and flip it for profit quicker than someone who bought a Soho loft circa 1978. But now everyone recognizes that a promising domain name means money, honey, and that means the term "land grab" is getting thrown around an awful lot.

Some of the applications are, as expected, no-brainers. Just in the Cs, General Motors wants .Cadillac, Citigroup wants .CITI, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants wants .cpa.

But the really interesting applications are the ones with multiple prospective owners. Amazon and Google are going head-to-head for several choice TLDs: .cloud, .search, .shop, .movie, and .book. Is this like the Filene's wedding sale, where you grab as many dresses as possible with the assumption anything that doesn't fit is a bargaining chip? The organization that issues ISBNs, Bowker, is also in the running for .book and seems like it may well be the most impartial choice, but what do we know?

Examining Amazon's other requests, we can't help but wonder whether the ecommerce juggernaut is building Skynet over on the West Coast. Besides .box, the company wants .bot, .call, .circle, and .now. As in, the Singularity.now?

Also, Google (which is apparently handling all its applications through a branch called Charleston Road Registry Inc.) wants .mom, .baby, .family, .dad, .pet, and .boo. We're not sure whether those are supposed to fall under "Domains we think have interesting and creative potential" or what.

Two utterly random gems: the Pontificium Consilium de Comunicationibus Socialibus AKA the Pontifical Council for Social Communication (which we assume is a branch of the Vatican) wants .Catholic, while Hotel Cipriani Srl wants .Cipriani.

Finally, the Guardian is the sole applicant for .observer. Sadface.betabeat.

Consider yourself relocated, kitty. (Photo: Flickr.com/deerwooduk)

With ICANN set to reveal new top-level domains any moment now, the number of available Internet addresses is about to balloon. Various organizations around the world have applied to register more than 1,900. A fair number of those are brands staking claim to their own names, like Google staking out .youtube. But companies like Donuts have applied to administer generic names like .bank and .baby, meaning businesses and individuals can soon register for the digital equivalent of  vanity license plates. It's going to get messy and it's going to get confusing, fast.

However, there are several specific top-level domain purchases we recommend:

1. LILWAYNE.MONEY

As the ringleader of Young Money, Lil Wayne obviously needs LilWayne.money. While he's at it, he should register similar sites for each of his Cash Money Records label mates. Quick, before another crew beats you to it.

2. GMAIL.DOWN

Single-serve sites for every popular Internet service answering the question, "Is X Down?" at .down. Let's start with Gmail.

3. ALANMOORE.WIZARD

Watchmen auteur and comics legend Alan Moore should create a personal website on .wizard. We would also accept AlanMoore.occult and AlanMooreHates.Hollywood.

4. PIRATEBAY.HOLLYWOOD

Speaking of the movie business, the Pirate Bay needs a new home at .Hollywood, wouldn't you say? Ditto every torrent site in existence.

5. PATENT.TROLL

Operation Name and Shame begins now.

6. GOP.SEX

Helpfully aggregating all your Republican sex scandal news in one convenient location.

7. EVERYTHING.CUTE

Let's migrate every puppy cam and laughing baby and cat meme to .cute. It'll be an orgy of adorable, a gated community of cute.

Good morning, we brought you coffee. (flickr.com/cgk)

Hope you aren't holding your breath 'til you can register that .money address. The expansion of top-level domain names has reportedly morphed into a "bug-plagued mess." [CNNMoney]

Now here's a blast from the pre-Internet past: Microsoft has partnered with Encyclopedia Britannica and will  now prominently feature its information in Bing results. [TechCrunch]

Sounds like the legal community is losing patience with the patent wars. A judge just canceled the Apple-Motorola trial, because neither could prove damages. [Reuters]

There sure are a lot of dudes on Airtime. Hey Sean Parker, maybe another way to make the Internet less boring would be to interest more women in your service? Spitballing here. [BusinessWeek]

The U.N. is mulling a tax on American Internet companies. Good luck with that, guys. [CNET]

North Korea has discovered cyberwar. [ZDnet]

Also, the company's name is Donuts. (flickr.com/montage_man)

At first, all the enthusiasm for top-level domains was fun and actually totally understandable. Some of them--many of them, even--make perfect sense. The city already has .NYC in the works, and the European Broadcasting Union has dibs on .eurovision. But things are starting to look a little, well, frothy. Google has applied for .youtube and .google. Fair enough. But the company also wants .lol, which invites massive speculation.

And now, according to the Wall Street Journal, a startup called Donuts has raised a whopping $100 million Series A, in the hopes of becoming the go-to registry for top-level domain names. CEO Paul Stahura tells the Journal the company has applied to run 307 domains. And before you ask why .com isn't good enough, don't worry, Mr. Stahura has an explanation: 

“Right now it’s difficult to find a good name, a memorable name in ‘.com,’” he said. “We will provide specificity and choice. If you’re a doctor, let’s say, you could get ‘.doctor.’ If you have a small cleaning business you might get ‘.cleaning.’”

And you don't want to have to resort to a *used* domain name, do you?

Chief marketing officer of Donuts, Mason Cole, pointed out that in one recent domain name sale, PersonalLoans.com sold for $1 million. “That’s a lot to spend on a ‘used’ name,” he said, “What if the buyer had access to ‘personal.loans’ instead?”

If users have to sort through PersonalLoans.com and Personal.Loans and Loans.Personal and God knows what else just to find someone who'll give them money, well, the Internet is about to get a whole lot more complicated and not in a good way, either. Maybe JoeSchmo.doctor looks snazzy, but we're skeptical this will actually solve everyone's discoverability problems.

So far, this sounds like nothing so much as digital vanity license plates.