Restaurant giant terminates plans for .McDonalds and .MCD domain names.
McDonald’s had decided it doesn’t want to run new top level domain names after all.
The restaurant chain applied to run the .McDonalds and .MCD top level domain names, but it recently sent termination notices (pdf) to domain name overseer ICANN voluntarily relinquishing the two domains.
It joins a host of companies that applied for so-called .brand top level domain names that have decided it’s not worth the expense or effort.
ICANN also just published a termination notice from Pampered Chef, a Berkshire Hathaway company, for .PamperedChef.
While the domain industry has pushed the potential of owning a .brand top level domain name, only a few companies have embraced these domains so far. It seems that many of the .brand domains were applied for on a defensive basis.
John says
You think McDonalds makes mistakes on real estate, online or off? No they don’t. They are well-known masters of real estate.
Ray Croc asked a crowd of Harvard what he sold. After all the various answers he replied, “Wrong. We sell real estate”. Meaning, they buy the very best real estate the world and the rest comes easy.
mr800king says
BINGO!!
Kassey Lee says
My recent post “Do you need your .brand domain extension?” (http://coreile.com/c170624.html) looks at the situation in China. The future of .brand is grim.
Daniel Gustafson says
Exactly right.
andref says
The benefits of a .brand are not universal and should be analyzed on a brand-by-brand basis. Just because McDonald’s leaderships decided against .mcd and .mcdonalds doesn’t mean that Barclays (home.barclays), Amazon (chime.aws), Google (ai.google), Canon (global.canon) and 100 +others who have launched compelling .brand use cases should halt their digital transformation projects. Also, .brands can coexist in a powerful way with .com, .org and other TLDs as useful redirects to existing properties. My point is that I don’t think it’s a matter of .brands are good or bad, but rather a creative and logical process to understand how a brand, given their business objectives, can optimize the digital experience using all TLDs or one TLD for that matter of that is best.
Justin E says
BINGO!!
Will says
That sounds like marketing b.s to me. Sorry to say it.
Snoopy says
Barclays (home.barclays), Amazon (chime.aws), Google (ai.google), Canon (global.canon)
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Needles in a haystack. .Brand has been a disaster, the names are not logical and don’t even look like domains.
Rod says
GTLD = Good To Lose Dinero