By Alexander Smirnov
Soon the national segment of the world network Internet will mark its anniversary. The first Internet sites on Bynet appeared twenty years ago. It is a matter of resources, the names of which for the first time acquired the well-known ‘.by’. It is possible that this list will be slightly extended to this anniversary, and users, typing the names of some Belarusian sites, could use the keyboard layout without switching. And it is expected that, this year, our country will be able to register its first Cyrillic domain name.
However, it is still unknown, what will be the first Belarusian Cyrillic domain, although experts are of the opinion that it will sound and will be written as ‘.бел’. Recently, voting took place on one of large domestic web resources, and the majority of users prefer this option. The second place was taken by domain of the type ‘.рб’ and there were also such suggestions as ‘.бай’, ‘.бу’ and ‘.блр’. Actually, it is not easy to register national domains. Cyrillic endings should contain at least one letter, different from the Latin alphabet. Russia was obliged to agree to the variant ‘.рф’ because their initial desire to name their domain zone as ‘.ру’ was not co-accepted because it corresponded, in the Latin alphabet, to the national domain of Paraguay. However, the Russians did not have a problem with these restrictions. At present, moment they are discussing the preparation of a number of other domains among which, for example, is ‘.рус’.
“Domains in national languages can simplify web-surfing of users who experience difficulties during the typing of the address of the site using the Latin alphabet,” says Grigory Bakunov, the Director on technologies of the company Yandex. “However, this problem has been solved by browsers for a long time. They understand what a user means typing the address with typing errors or using the Cyrillic alphabet instead of the Latin alphabet, and ‘sends’ it directly to a site, or to a search system for address specification.” Thus the expert notes, “What is good for the user is good for organisations. After all, their sites are designed to attract these users. Since the advent of the Cyrillic domain ‘.бел’, the capacity of domain names which can be used by organisations for additional promotion of their goods and services on the Internet, will increase. Names in the zone ‘.бел’ should arouse interest firstly in the state bodies, rendering electronic services to various sections of the population. But, if to judge by Russia’s experience, the representatives of businesses are quite often more active, and show a great interest in Cyrillic site name,” notes the representative of Yandex.
According to the Director of the technical administrator of the national domain ‘.by’ of the company hoster.by, Sergey Povalishev, at the present time the destiny of the Cyrillic domain is almost solved, though the Belarusian side should fulfil several administrative procedures.
The registration of the domain for many people is just an empty phrase, but in practice, for representatives of businesses, it is first of all an attempt to protect their brand. After all, if the company does not make this itself, anyone could register the domain name with their company brand. In Belarus, there have already been cases of the capture of well-known domains in the ‘.by’ zone. In similar situations, it not always comes to trial. Often, the ‘invaders of domains’ simply agree to sell them.
By the way, several records were shattered at once in the domain zone ‘.by’ last year. First of all, more than 36 thousand new sites were registered in 2013 on Bynet. That means that our country, for the first time, bypassed the European countries of Portugal, Iceland, Montenegro and Romania on growth rates of new registrations. Following the results of the year, 94.4 thousand new domains were registered on Bynet. In total, as of 1st January, 2014 Bynet numbered more than 65 thousand sites.
