Domain Owl

China continues to go rogue on Google, accomplishing both the most massive redirect crime in internet history (legally) and giving the biggest entity of SEO dynamic driving all development worldwide. The doings of Google and the Chinese government on this issue has made headlines around the world and not just for domainers.

But how valuable can a Google ranking be if it elides all Chinese internet traffic? Is Google still Google? China is a big place. That is a lot of inputs missing from the matrix. Many articles extensively trace the invisible bureaucracy of China and examine the role of Chinese business practices in yet another milieu of international trade.

Both Google and China are the biggest titan players in their respective milieus and yet each is attempting to give the most profitable opportunity and most advertising revenue creating power on earth the finger. That’s not small potatoes, and China has an ambitious start in its national internet derby for world dominance. China may hope to attract international customers by closing its door to Google search results, but it’s not clear how.

How efficient can a Google result be if the operator knows one fifth of potential word traffic is missing from its mathematical result? Can Google operate in a world where a huge tranche of its results are known to be missing? How can China set up a competitor search engine brand to vend internal China internet search result oriented traffic?

What does it mean that Google is being turned off in China? Well, it could be the start of a newly mechanized internet model, perhaps the first without the premier decision maker mover and shaker in the online world involved. But will Google learn to do business missing one of the most populous nations on Earth? If you ask Chinese experts,

Cross-pollinating the whole mess is the mobile phone connection, which can drive mobile Internet traffic.The China Google model for defeat seems to stem any input to a search engine driving value from inputs. So, is Google getting brushed off the world stage in China, or is Google getting away from the constriction of Chinese business tactics while they can?

The news reports stemming from these activities both by Google and by China are confusing. is China standing up for its rights or is it crimping the style of the Internet’s leading pioneer? How can a government decide to blanket is citizens in censorship? How can public use of the sites convince Chinese regulators otherwise?

The world is watching. And clicking.

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We are living in the industrial era of domaining.

I was reading Irving Stone’s excellent book “Men to Match My Mountains” about the Westward settlement of the united States, and too many similarities to the California Gold Rush came to mind. One phrase stuck in my mind from the book regarding the gold rush and the population of men eager to mine the riverbeds and earth of the Sierra Nevada.

The first land rushes of the internet have passed, and the second coming of the domain hordes are still scrabbling over the claims. The easy pickings have been grabbed and some heavy digging and luck is now involved for domain success. But the benefits for hard digging latecomers still exist. Luck does play a part, but so does hard work.

One of the phrases used to describe the settlement of the Western United States  “a marching laboratory of political experiment”. This is because the migrating hordes brought their systems of government with them to function in the new mining camps and towns. The business of finding gold also helped enable a growing system of self-government independent of a federal governing body.

Something similar has happened online with encroaching populations of domain owners moving back and forth and bringing their mores to the new markets. New global body of domain name owners and groups of representative geographic domains have joined the fray. I speak here of the non-English character domain name markets and foreign language frontiers in domain names worldwide.

I would term the domaining community at this time as “a rapidly byting environment of creative experiment.” Individual domain name owners can define their web ventures on a piecemeal, name by name basis. Dynamics in both trends show massive populations of individuals coming together for new goals and using new tools and technology.

But after the first few waves of prospectors looking for easy gold had come through, some infrastructure erected itself. The systems of government and geographical settlement set the standard for mimetic communities in the area to establish themselves. These edifications provided groundwork for the communities to come in the future.

This sounds a lot to me like the domain name marketplace for the last ten years. The first easy gold rush is equivalent to the first few domain tld generations. By now, word has gotten out and the best claims have been staked. The later era of the gold digging claim towns were a changed breed, full of lawlessness, crimes, and lessening profit for all concerned.

Every domainer should sling his pick and shovel onto his back every day before booting up, and take a good look around. There’s gold in them thar domains.

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