Peregrine

Richard K. Miller wrote about the new .mobi top level domain (a.k.a. TLD). Here’s a quote from the post:

Here are my 9 reasons why .mobi is a bad idea:

1. You can already serve mobile content from any subdomain or folder, like mobi.example.com or example.com/mobi
2. You can already use content negotiation. If the browser says “Accept: text/vnd.wap.wml”, then return mobile content.
3. You can already use the “handheld” media type in your CSS.
4. You can already create light-weight, semantic HTML that can be viewed on multiple devices.
5. Since “mobi” isn’t a word, it’s not likely to be in the predictive text dictionary on most phones. A good domain for phones would employ a real word. (Actually .com works.)
6. Without predictive text, typing “mobi” on a phone means pressing 6, then waiting, then 6-2-4. A good domain for phones would not use two adjacent letters on the same key.
7. Phones with QWERTY keyboards are likely to have full-fledged browsers that can view .com websites anyway.
8. Dot-mobi domains are expensive.
9. Browsers like Opera can rerender existing web sites to make them viewable on movable devices.

If you see value in .mobi that I’m not seeing, let me know, but I think it will be a failure. We should as soon introduce a .BestViewedWithInternetExplorerAt800by600 domain so we can keep track of all those web pages from the 90’s.

Number 8 on Richard’s list is the reason why .mobi is a good idea … from the perspective of the registrars who are the ones who pushed for the new TLD.

But why not just .mobil ? I mean, come one, it would be so much easier for people to pronounce, even in a wide variety of languages.

Anyway, I think the addition of .mobi is just dumb. Basically for all the other reasons you already stated. Especially number 6; how irritating.