…but these companies have a good reason not to.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek just published an article that says representatives from P&G and HP have confirmed the companies don’t plan to apply for new top level domain names.
A couple observations:
1. One of the reasons these companies are less likely to apply is because their natural extensions are ineligible. .PG and .HP are only two letters; they must be three. HP has already complained about this to ICANN. Oh, and .pg is already delegated to Papua New Guinea.
2. Don’t be surprised if someone within the company decides to apply for a new top level domain name after all. Some of this is positioning ahead of the rollout. Both of these companies may be worried about competitors getting their own because their names “work” with new TLDs, such as .IBM.
BusinessWeek says it informally surveyed 21 S&P 500 companies, none of which said they are certain to apply.
gpmgroup says
Given how incredibly successful the existing system is one would have hoped ICANN would have been a little more sensible in their approach to “Improving” the DNS.
I can’t see how’s it in the public interest for ICANN to even offer to award some of the most economically advantaged companies an implicit DNS branding advantage simply by contracting with ICANN.
Proctor and Gamble with over 80 brands will need to spend over $15,000,000 if they wish to apply for all their brands as new gTLDs and pay ICANN a further $2,000,000 every year going forward compared with the existing system cost of $800 p.a.
Medium sized players will have to consider whether it’s worth spending $185,000 + $25,000 per year with ICANN to enjoy the same level of implicit DNS branding and enter ICANN’s .brand super league. For start ups and smaller players the cost of admission to this implicit DNS branding advantage is likely to prove prohibitive.
The level playing field of the Internet will be destroyed.