.mobi Makes No Sense

The .mobi TLD is available now. I'm hoping the world will mostly ignore this. Top-level domains (TLD) are meant to be the top of the hierarchy, not a a duplicate of another hierarchy. Supposedly now, I'm to rush out and register the .mobi version of all my sites and put the mobile copy there.

In reality, the web content is not really separate from mobile content -- it's the same content viewed in different ways. I don't need to put a whole new site up on a whole new domain name.

.mobi was to also help mobile users identify sites that are designed for small screens, but as screens get bigger, networks get faster, and phones get more powerful, the line between mobile and desktop is blurring, so I don't care so much if I'm viewing content geared toward mobile when it all just renders fine.

.mobi is just a money grab for the registrars. It's just telling me that I need to spend the money on the .net, .org, .biz, .info, and now .mobi version of my domain name. I'll continue to use a more semantic organization to my pages plus CSS to style it up, so the same page renders in both environments. When the time comes to gear a site specifically for mobile, then I'll use context paths or maybe a wap.hjsoft.com URL, since WAP/mobile is only an aspect of my site, not the other way around.

Update (29 September 2006): This article at techdirt states everything much more completely than I bothered.