From brands to portfolio players, here’s a look at what we know so far.
The “big reveal” of who applied for what top level domains isn’t until June 13. But that didn’t stop a lot of companies from making their own announcements over the 36 hours since the application window closed.
Here’s my roundup and analysis:
Google announced four domains it is applying for, but AdAge reports the company is applying for upwards of 50 domain names.
The announcement came from Vint Cerf, Google’s “Chief Internet Evangelist”. He also happens to be the former Chairman of ICANN’s board. One thought is if Cerf is trying to throw ICANN a bone here. Not in the form of money, because we all know ICANN’s coffers are going to be a lot fuller than we expected just months ago. It’s more of a “we believe in ICANN and what they’re doing” statement. Still, I think Google could have done this by applying for perhaps a dozen domains including some non-.brand domains. So this seems like a bit more. It seems like Google sees benefits to new top level domains.
But I gotta ask: .lol? Really?
Is Facebook applying for .facebook or anything else?
A Facebook spokesperson told AdAge a couple months ago that it wasn’t applying. But it’s hard for a spokesperson to answer a negative like that. A TLD initiative could come from anywhere within the company.
And a lot has happened since two months ago.
I reached out to Facebook yesterday to ask again if they applied for any new TLDs. All they would say is “no comment”.
I’d be willing to bet money (or rapidly devaluing FB shares) that Facebook applied for something.
TLDH and Directi
Two of the big “portfolio” applicants have announced their applications.
Top Level Domain Holdings, which owns Minds + Machines, applied for 92 domains, 68 of which are on its own behalf. (Others are with partners or on behalf of clients.)
It’s not very surprising to me that the company applied for .green. It has an entity set up to apply for .eco, but that one could be messy. This will be a battle to watch.
The company also applied for two IDN top level domains.
TLDH applied for a lot of common strings that will be in contention.
The same can be said for Directi’s new Radix company (see disclosure). The company applied for 31 strings. Company founder Bhavin Turakhia told DomainIncite he expects every one of the names to be in contention with other applicants.
GoDaddy
One of the companies both TLDH and Radix will have to face off with is Go Daddy. I broke the news Wednesday night of the company’s applications for .home and .casa. Not surprisingly, .home has multiple applicants. Slightly surprisingly, so does .casa. It will be interesting to see how these play out.
The brand scare continues
The notion that brands must apply for their .brand to keep others from doing so certainly played a role in applications. You can blame Association of National Advertisers in part for this. But I’ve got to wonder what consultant convinced lighter maker Zippo that it needed to apply for .zippo.
Here’s a quote from an article in The Economist:
Jeff Duke, general counsel at Zippo, a lighter-maker, says the firm already spends $3m a year “playing whack-a-mole” with claim-jumpers—a tidy sum for a small manufacturer, albeit one with a big brand. The expansion will “multiply our headaches”, he predicts. Zippo will apply for .zippo, even though “we don’t have any great plans for it.”
This is a prime example of a domain that didn’t need to be applied for on a defensive basis.
.Sucks
This one, courtesy of a Momentous (Pool.com) subsidiary, is sure to be a punching bag. Regardless of the true intent, the company will be hard pressed to convince anyone that it’s not merely a stick up to get brands to protect themselves.
Momentous figures to profit from new TLDs from others in the coming years. It’s offering a digital archery service. It’s also sure to have a lot of clients for sunrise auctions.
Things are getting interesting…
Disclosure: I work with Directi’s media companies. I have not been involved with Radix.
Yay. Another article about the soon to be irrelevant gTLDs.
No offense Andrew, I know this news but all of this is just a HUGE waste of time and money and will only serve to confuse consumers and piss off trademark attorneys.
@ Rob Sequin – I understand your viewpoint. But regardless of what happens with new TLDs, they will be very relevant to the domain name industry.
Hmmm. Is .aero, .museum, .pro, .tel, .ws etc relevant to the industry? Sure in a very minimal way… some better than others but few end users care and few in the domain industry care.
I see no reason why new gtlds would change that.
The roll outs will obviously make for news stories but will most end users or people in the domain industry care? Probably not.
Just making a comment that we are already seeing the domain blogs cover the same stories.
Who cares who applies for what gtld?
Sorry, just my opinion.
I have to agree with Rob on this Andrew.
I think it is funny to see the TLD hysteria has such an impact on this blog.
It really isn’t news. Google is the biggest applicant? .LOL indeed, that shows right there that the fortune 500 think it is a crapshoot.
What about the REAL reason new TLDs have come in to play??
To line the pockets of ICANN execs before a massive fallout and restructuring.
Typing youtube without an extension will still take you to Google SERPS.
So Google wants to confuse the consumer with new TLD hysteria. They want people to forget dot com because type in / direct navigation traffic is a MIDDLEMAN for google.
What should be news is the RATHER LARGE ammount of .brands that have not applied for their TLD, and are still 100% relevent with a .com address.
Small business (the people who can’t get their dot com) cannot afford to run a new gTLD.
So, it appears the biggest players are speculators, and domain portfolio owners like enom, pool, and godaddy.
If anything, you should note what a massive failure new gTLDs have already been DOA. And your reporting on this issue should be more subjective.
As a small portfolio domainer, and brand exec I don’t see any value in throwing a bunch of money at ICANN < One of the most corrupted greedy corporations on the planet.
First I saw .lol I thought the same thing.
Then I remembered the murmurings of .laugh, humor, .joke and .comedy I came across and it struck me – .lol really is the tld of choice for a humor category. It’s short, hip and conveys context immediately.
.lol could work
You might be surprised how many people search for laughs online.
although i do not find new tlds interesting, i don’t think they’re completely irrelevant as some people think. it is worth following what goes on here.
there will be end users who register such domains and they will impact domain prices. it will offer more choice of “good, memorable” names (to those who don’t know much about domains) and they are not so concerned with the com or net extension. in one way i must agree: eg: rob.plumber is more memorable and marketable than robplumber.com.
i reckon we will see a softening of domain prices after their release coz many end users would rather pay $50-100 (?) for one of these than potentially thousands for a com/net.
time will tell. make no mistake: it WILL take away from the existing domain aftermarket. but by how much and for how long are the questions!