Deloitte’s benefits from .deloitte seem murky at best.

Global consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited put out a press release today announcing its application for the .deloitte top level domain. (That the company was applying for .deloitte had been known for a long time already.)

I’m still somewhat skeptical about .brand, so I want to go in and dissect the benefits that Deloitte claims it will get from owning .deloitte. I welcome differing opinions.

One of the key objectives of adopting a TLD is to give a brand a more personalized online presence and enhance the site user experience.

Is .deloitte a more personalized presence than deloitte.com? I’m not sure. Keep in mind that it won’t be just .deloitte. There still has to be a second level domain. As for enhancing the site user experience, I’m not sure what could do that with .deloitte that would improve the user experience over deloitte.com.

“Being a pioneering applicant for a TLD aligns with the Deloitte brand’s positioning and marketplace presence as leader, innovator, and impact maker”

I understand where the company is coming from here. It offers IT consulting, so it wants to look like it’s ahead of the curve. I wouldn’t be surprised if it also sold the idea of new TLDs to many of its clients.

Additionally, the ‘.deloitte’ TLD will offer improved site accessibility and usability to Deloitte member firm clients, recruits, and others for an enhanced online experience—and lay a foundation for future online innovation.”

I don’t understand the accessibility and usability. I get the “future online innovation”. I have yet to have someone tell me something they plan to do with a .brand or other new TLD that will be innovative; i.e. you can’t do it with an existing TLD. So really any innovation around new TLDs will be in the future, not now. Will there be some break-through? Maybe. But I haven’t heard about it yet.

A TLD also helps to ensure that the internal online activity and exchange of information among a company’s employees is secure.

I suppose this is possible. Could be a DNS thing. Any security experts have thoughts on this?

Additionally, a TLD can help to serve as a defense against counterfeit operations that could harm an organization’s reputation–including “domain squatting,” in which fraudulent websites are created to profit from using a brand name belonging to a legitimate business.

Unless everyone stops going to Deloitte.com and the company’s many other web sites, and unless all of the world understands what a top level domain is, I don’t see this benefit. It’s not like the company will stop registering domains in .com just because it owns .deloitte.

The press release didn’t mention anything about transitioning away from .com. I imagine any of its public facing sites will remain on their existing URLs. If the company decides to transition, that will be a very long and very costly experience.

Source from http://domainnamewire.com

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