What are the REAL benefits of ccTLDs?

ccTLD (Country code top-level domain, such as '.us' and '.uk') issues again on the computing email list here in Trinidad and Tobago - and while I respect the fact that ICANN is trying to get input from around the world... I have yet to see any value in ccTLDs.

Sure, they are good for government offices in different countries. Gov.tt is what the Trinidad and Tobago government uses. Fair enough. Gov.us? No. Gov.uk? Yes. Gov.gy?¹ No, but you can surf around here.¹ But government offices with similar names might gain some benefit from ccTLDs if other country government offices have sites with similar names. Or commercial entities having similar names - I always end up at FastForward.com site when I'm looking for FastForward.tt. Why was it named that? I don't know.

But governments can benefit from ccTLDs, if only governments were the same. They're not. Still, I'll allow that governments could benefit from ccTLDs if they could agree on things...

But I don't see how I, personally, benefit from a ccTLD extension on all these websites. I talked to John Crain while I was at the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum - he's the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for ICANN - and I told him the same. He told me that some businesses do benefit from ccTLDs, and gave examples - I don't remember the exact examples, but some examples did benefit. This evening I decided to revisit all of this because while a business might benefit, I don't see any website which isn't targetting a market that would use a ccTLD for benefit.

Thus, I searched for ccTLD benefits. Actual benefits of having a ccTLD. So many people seem to accept that ccTLDs are a good thing^tm, but nobody has been able to answer concretely, instead talking about some vague benefit that they can't nail down.

The best benefits of ccTLD resource I could find is The Benefits Of Having A ccTLD Name, written about a month ago. From the article:

...There are a number of benefits that can be gained from choosing a domain name with a country specific tld, especially if you conduct your business primarily in one particular country...

...Most of the large search engines will give you a higher search ranking for a site that has the tld of the searchers country. For example, if someone from the United Kingdom is performing a search for widgets, a search engine will often rank widgets.co.uk higher than other sites selling the same product but only have a .com tld...

...Having a domain tld will often give the buyer more confidence when making a purchase as they consider the site to be local, therefore governed under the same laws as the buyer. This makes it easier to follow up and sales and make complaints if any problems occur during the purchase of the product. It also helps to settle any nerves if the buyer is able to see a street address that they recognize, rather than a foreign address...

This all sounds really nice. But I still don't see a benefit for the web surfer or the businesses in small countries with... smaller markets. It wouldn't benefit me, because I talk about different regions of the world... It benefits Amazon, for Canada and the U.K... But Amazon bought those names so that they could market to specific countries. So the most benefit to be derived - following large businesses like Amazon - is to buy the ccTLDs of other countries where there is a market that they are interested in.

Is there an Amazon.gy? No. Is there an Amazon.tt? No. Why? Small markets. Now, look at a company like GeoserveTT.com, which exports and identifies itself from Trinidad and Tobago not by a ccTLD but by... adding TT before the .com, doing the same thing without a ccTLD though allowing for international business. The name itself is positioned for a wider market specifically because it is not streamlined for Trinidad and Tobago, which has a relatively small number of people using search engines.

DUH.

Large businesses can benefit from ccTLDs if they export to the geographic market where the ccTLD is used. Again, the lower population countries and/or the countries of less internet penetration (developing nation) derive no benefit of substance because:

1. They have a small market that most large companies aren't interested in - thus the prices they would charge to maintain a balance in the ccTLD financial economy would further discourage foreign investment from the ccTLDs.
2. Because the cost of ccTLDs are higher, the people who would want to target their own local market would have to pay a higher price to do so - thus handicapping them in a global market.
3. The larger markets will benefit from ccTLDs because people may wish to support the companies in their country - YET - the smaller countries remain handicapped while trying to export, and have to buy foreign ccTLDs to do so - unless they go with the international standards and forget the ccTLDs altogether.

There is a hidden benefit to ccTLDs that a lot of people don't know about, though, and it may not benefit them. ICANN benefits - and therefore, hypothetically, we all benefit from them getting ccTLD contributions to their funding since this makes them less reliance on the widely discussed contracts with the U.S. government. Is that enough, though?

All ccTLDs really are good for, at least for now, seems to be domain hacks. Until someone can make a case for the average person benefiting from ccTLDs that aren't wrapped around a geographical worldview and are more in line with globalization, I don't see that the additional costs of a ccTLD is worthwhile unless it's for a large company or a government. And when it comes to that, the large businesses and governments already have control of WSIS. What do they need us for?

Consider this quote:

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.

Getting average people who do not really benefit from ccTLDs to support ccTLDs seems pretty manipulative to me. I'm not deriving any profit from ccTLDs. Are you? If you are, you certainly don't want or need my input. ;-)

ccTLDs are about as useful to me as the pet rock, so don't expect me to support them blindly. Show some tangible benefits. ccTLDs are more of a liability for developing nations than otherwise.

Marquis de Flers and Arman Caillavet
¹Try out the Ministry of Information Link on this page for a chuckle.