Tuesday, 22 December 2009 18:20 Chief Editor
A Tale of Two (dot)Berlins?
Industry specialists who follow new gTLDs were quite surprised to hear about the UniteBerlin initiative which wants to enter "dotBerlin" as a new Top Level Domain in the next ICANN round. Not because dotBerlin is not a good idea, but rather because this project only appeared this December 21st while everyone had known and seen the same group of people representing the original dotBerlin for more than six years!
The fact that Minds and Machines (famous for .Food) support the new project only added to the interest of this true ICANN story.
Read on to see what Dirk Krischenowski – founder of the original dotBerlin project – had to say about all this in an exclusive interview to domainnews.com!
DomainNews.com: Recent announcement from the American Company Minds & Machines of their UniteBerlin initiative came as quite a surprise: are you partners on this? Did you seek help from Mind & Machines on this project?
Dirk Krischenowski: We are not partners in this or in any other project of Minds + Machines, and we certainly did not ask them for help.
Since UniteBerlin seems independant from your own DotBerlin, did the news came as a surprise considering you have been pushing for dotBerlin on your own for six years?
Since we know how Minds + Machines have acted in Bavaria and New York City, as well as in .Gay we were prepared for such an announcement.
Some people would argue that nobody can own a string and therefore everybody is free to promote a “dotBerlin” before ICANN eventually grants the TLD (or doesn’t). What is your view on this?
We live in a free market economy where competition is a part of daily life. Having said that, we know our vision for dotBerlin is strong, has been tested for 6+ years and rests on a broad foundation in the Berlin Community.
You have been quite instrumental in the CityTLD initiative: do you know whether your colleagues of .London and .Paris are worried about the same thing happening to them?
No, we have yet to talk to them about this yet… But we would not be surprised to see more projects in this vein in the future.
How do you think you can differenciate yourself from this competitor?
dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KG today is a company with close to 100 shareholders which represent a significant part of the Berlin community, many of them being organisations composed of thousands of SME member companies.
This, for us is what dotBerlin should be about: not just another TLD but a way for the Berlin community to be adequately represented on the Internet.
