Wednesday August 22, 2001 By Jeffrey Ganek, Chicago Tribune

In a recent guest editorial (“Dot-Com or Go Home,” August 13, 2001), Naseem Javed argued that, for businesses at least, only a ".com" Internet address is worth owning.

“People are conditioned to go to .com Web addresses,” Mr. Javed asserted. Then he added: “Changing their habits promises to be an uphill battle.”

In essence, this is a pro-status quo argument based on the quaint but benighted notion that people will accept only those things to which they’re already accustomed. He forgets that businesses are conditioned to look for new opportunities.

Mr. Javed’s don’t-rock-the-boat mindset is completely out of step with today’s fast-changing business climate. Let’s remember that the Internet and the .com address itself have only been around a few years.

People used to believe the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. Those misguided worldviews changed. And the “.com-centric” worldview will also change, just as soon as something better comes along.

That’s where “.biz” comes in. It is the world’s first and only global Internet domain created specifically to meet the high-performance needs of the business community. The shift from .com to .biz amounts to far more than simply substituting one three-letter suffix for another. As far as the business community is concerned, .biz is the next big thing.

But it’s going to take a little time. After all, .biz hasn’t even been launched yet. Officially, the first batch of .biz domain names will go live on October 1. Companies that want to be part of this initial launch need to register for their .biz domain names by September 17.

The .biz domain was established by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) -– the governing body that oversees the Internet’s domain name system -– as part of its initiative to create a more useful and relevant “virtual zoning” of the Internet. ICANN created .biz and six other new Top Level Domains (TLDs) to augment and expand the three existing TLDs (.com, .net and .org). The latest extension, .biz, was designated as the only TLD just for business.

With .biz, companies will be able to establish, enhance and extend their presence on the Internet. The extension also offers a host of technological advantages over .com and other existing domains. It provides a much more stable, secure and robust business-oriented platform built around an information-rich database that enables companies to register multiple data elements.

These can be used to help customers locate and contact a company more easily -- with everything from domain names, telephone numbers, key personnel, along with products and services offered and location information. The enhanced security features of .biz will help to prevent the hijacking or accidental deletion of invaluable domain names.

Establishing a .biz domain name also will help companies cut through the .com clutter. More than 28 million .com names have already been registered. Since the .com domain covers so many sites serving so many different purposes, it’s impossible to know whether a particular .com address represents a bona-fide business. In contrast, .biz means business, period.

From the perspective of other countries .com is viewed as a US-centric domain. In the international business community -– where the .com-centric view of the world never really took hold -– there is growing excitement about .biz because it offers companies around the world the first truly global business-oriented Internet domain.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that .com has a big head start over .biz -- at least here in the United States. But to be fair, there really hasn’t been any real –- dare I say it –- .COMpetition. Until now it’s been .com or nothing. But .biz is about to change the status quo forever.

All things considered, it’s both premature and narrow-minded to declare the upcoming new TLDs dead on arrival. Let’s be patient and give new domains like .biz time to establish themselves.

If we do, we’ll soon discover the Internet world isn’t flat after all, and that the sun doesn’t revolve around .com.

Jeffrey Ganek is chairman of the board of NeuLevel, Inc., a joint venture between NeuStar, Inc. and Melbourne IT, Ltd., and the official registry for the .biz domain.