.Sucks hits general availability and the company that spent $4.7 million for a .com launches a new top level domain name.
It will be a controversial week for new top level domain names, assuming Vox Populi doesn’t delay the start of .sucks general availability a second time.
.Sucks domain names become available to the general public on Saturday at a suggested retail price of $249. Companies can also block their domains at participating registrars for about $199.
The much-maligned “consumer advocate” pricing of about $10 won’t be available until fall, which means there probably won’t be a rash of cybersquatting on .sucks at first because of the high price tag. ICANN asked the U.S. and Canadian governments about Vox Populi’s plans for .sucks, and both of them punted.
Also this week, spreadbetting company IG will launch .Markets on Thursday through its subsidiary Boston Ivy.
IG is known in the domain name industry for purchasing the IG.com domain name for $4.7 million.
If you think the market for .markets is fairly limited, you might be right. IG originally planned to keep this and its other top level domain names as closed generics for its own use. It later reversed course, and the company will launch .broker, .cfd, .trading, .forex and .spreadbetting to the general market. It is keeping .nadex as a closed domain.
Based on their counter on the bottom of the nic.sucks homepage it looks like general availability comes at approximately 4pm EST on Friday the 19th.
5 days and 7 hours (as of right now) would put it at Saturday the 20th
Depends on your timezone.