For years, it’s been known as the ‘dot-com thing.’ But a new policy on how websites should name themselves could turn it into the ‘dot-india thing’.The Ministry of Information Technology has worked out a policy framework and implementation plan to increase the number of websites that end with a dot in (.in) instead of the usual dot com, dot net or dot org.Last week, Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran appealed to Indians to shift over to dot in. The advantage: Indian sites will be easy to identify by Internet users.But it’s not just about more eyeballs, or a shiny new national identity to replace the one battered by the dot-com bust. Online firms say they could actually benefit from ending in a dot in instead of a dot anything else.‘‘It’s optional, but if people shift to using dot in at the national level, it will be, by and large, positive. Most online companies, however, will want a URL that relates to their line of business,’’ says Nilanjan Roy, CEO, Hungama.com.For instance, smaller firms may get more attention if they end in a country name. ‘‘A country web address can have enormous benefits. For example, when the world thinks technology, it thinks of India first. With a .com or .org web site, Indian firms compete with the crowd. With .in they’ll be easy to find,’’ says Ram Mohan, V-P and CTO, Afilias Ltd, a registry service provider for ‘dot info’ sites. Agrees Mohit Gupta, CEO, VentureBazaar.com, ‘‘Many internet addresses already taken in the dot com or dot net space, are still available as dot in sites. This could be an advantage.’’Worldwide, the demand for websites ending in country names has surged. Dot de (.de) in Germany alone has 60 lakh users. In Asia, Japan’s dot jp has 438,154 sites, while Australia has 242,250 registered dot au users.But dot in loses out to China’s dot cn, which registered 30,000 users this June. India has 6,000 dot in sites, lower than Mexico with 70,000 .mx sites. ‘‘The slow uptake is probably because the Internet is ‘dot com’ here,’’ says Roy.But there’s more. The new policy to ‘liberalise’ dot in will first have to free it from the paperwork clutches of NCST, the only body authorised to give them out. ‘‘This is important as countries reporting high usage of country names in websites also report higher Internet usage,’’ says Paul Twomey, president and CEO of the Internet’s chief technical governing body, ICANN.‘‘Fifty-seven per cent people have net access in Germany, 51 per cent in UK, 48 per cent in Austria and 10 per cent in Mexico, compared with 0.5 per cent in India. But with 220 million people online, India has enough to try and make dot in more visible,’’ said Twomey, who met Maran on the issue.Nasscom also believes dot in can be beneficial, if implemented carefully. Says vice-president Sangeeta Gupta: ‘‘Dot in could have a cost advantage too. It may not be necessary to route Internet traffic through international servers for content that is created and used only in India.’’
