Cue the Twilight Zone music. Now, look deep, deeeeep into the future: Last week I posted about my recent Google dream. And last night I had another internet marketing dream -- this time about web browsers. I gotta lay off the Welsh wabbit!
So here's the dream: The major browsers (Firefox, Microsoft, et al.) introduced a new feature wherein any web surfer automatically has his URL completed with a paid result as he types the URL into his browser.
For example, suppose you want to visit my site, MarketingHeadhunter.com. As you start to type "m-a-r-k-e-t-n-g-h-e-a-d-..." your browser anticipates the end of the string and automatically completes it with a paid result, such as "marketingheadhunters.net". Careless surfers who hit Enter would be sent to that site. In my dream, the only way my prospect could get to my site was to type in my entire URL, "marketingheadhunter.com" ... and then hit Enter.
Firefox's answer to Google Adwords
For the sake of result relevancy, marketinghead... might be completed with
- marketingheadache
- marketingheadhunter.net, .org. etc
- marketingheadhunters.com, .net, etc
- marketingheadhunting.com, .net, etc
- and so on.
This service might be the browsers' version of Adwords -- allowing my competitors to usurp my prospect's type-in string so long as the completion was relevant. Subdomains could work too, such as marketingheadhunters.mri.com. Even the savviest domainers like Frank Schilling and Rick Schwartz don't have the resources to tie up every single iteration of a given generic domain. It's just not practical.
Talk about disruption! Anyone intending to enter my domain name would have the browser auto-complete with the domain of any one of my competitors -- thereby siphoning off my type-in traffic. Google already offers similar "suggestion" functionality for its popular toolbar.
Do you think this could happen? The way I see it, the only way this wouldn't be bad for my business is if all web users entered URLs the way I do: With the name of the dot-com site in the browser bar, followed by the keystroke "Cntrl-Enter." Scary.
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