Company tells domain name overseer that it doesn’t want .Honeywell anymore.
American conglomerate Honeywell (NYSE: HON) has decided it doesn’t want to run its own top level domain name after all.
The company informed (pdf) ICANN last month that it wishes to terminate its agreement to run .honeywell as a top level domain name. The company never used the domain; the only second level domain name it registered under .Honeywell was the obligatory nic.honeywell.
.Honeywell was the only domain name the conglomerate applied for.
The company joins others that have belatedly decided they didn’t want to operate new top level domains, including McDonald’s and Emerson.
snoopy1267 says
A wise move, why continue to waste hundreds of thousands on an extension they will never use?
Almost zero usage of brand, these extensions make no sense because the words are around the wrong way.
Pterippus says
The problem is that ICANN did not extend the concept to its logical conclusion. They should have made it such that buyers of personalised TLDs could simply have the domain ‘www.brand’ (i.e. browsers could type in ‘www.brand’ or simply just ‘brand’) without needing an extension (e.g. home.brand).
The only thing better than brand.com is brand; now and forever.
Snoopy says
They can use http://www.brand if they want.
John Berryhill says
Right, but they’d all have to adopt the same protocol in order to have a hope of “guessability”. But you are spot on with the words being in the wrong order, as I have also heard from the brand manager for a major automobile manufacturer. Many more .brand TLDs are going to be dropped since they were obtained on the basis of there being a limited time window to apply for them, so quite a few of the applications were simply exercises in avoiding a lost opportunity to obtain something they could figure out later if they wanted to use. (and, yes, urged on by the ICANN consultant corps)
In order to advertise the “home” destination in a .brand TLD, the brand owner, with potentially billions of value in the goodwill associated with their brand, has to pick some other word and give it ‘top billing’ on their marquee, ahead of their brand. I’s particularly tough if you are, say, Yamaha, and make everything from concert pianos to motorcycles. It would be one thing if DNS wild-carding were allowed, but it’s not since ICANN’s revenue model is based on registration volume of 2LDs. That also rules out any “TLD as database” applications, such as being able to use (product-serial-number).brand in service, support or warranty applications.
Having control of one’s own DNS data to the top-level may be of some marginal utility, but there is precious little practical value .brand TLDs. Now, of course, someone with something to sell may pop up here and argue otherwise, but one can’t deny the fact that you have better odds of seeing a snow leopard than a .brand TLD with any substantial use. It is going to become more difficult to foist these on brand owners against the growing wasteland of discarded .brand TLDs, so I can certainly understand the urgency.
One of the better pitches for these things was by Joe Alagna, then of Centralnic, who would explain that early email addresses, such as through Compuserve, would look like “(numeric)@compuserve.net”, which made no brand impression. Later, one could get “(brand)@earthlink.net” which included the brand, but still advertised Earthlink. Then, it became easier to get addresses like [email protected], which eliminated the ad for the provider, but still implicitly ‘advertises’ Verisign as the .com registry. Joe could get you to buy sand in the desert if you listen long enough.
The thing is, generic TLDs like .com are just that – generic. Nobody associates any particular brand with .com or other gTLDs (unless they are in the domain business), so they are blank canvases which do not detract from the commercial impression of a URL or email address.
Snoopy says
Yep, .com designates “Internet” not Verisign. It’s how people can tell the difference between a word and a website. .brand has issues in that my.sony doesn’t look like a website to a certain (possibly large) % of people.
Jean Guillon says
By the way: “home.brand” means nothing in French. I seriously doubt that it would become a standard: it is an English term.
Major Brands who applied for their .BRAND new gTLD do SEO but in fact…do they need it since Google does most of the work and will, in a way or another, point to their front page? I don’t think we need a standard until Google changes that.
Whatever is hit on google will point you to the right page on website from a .BRAND new gTLD…most of the time.
“www.brand” makes more sense to me in terms of standard but adoption…will take time.
Gene Downs says
There is nothing like number one dot com
steve brady says
McDonalds since 2015 continues using http://www.BigMac.rocks
The domain expires next month on April 22, 2019
Tom says
That brings the number of .BRAND terminations to almost 50. And you have hundreds of others that are just sitting there doing nothing. Clearly this program is a failure. But that doesn’t stop the consultants leading the SubPro and back end providers like Neustar pushing ICANN to open a new round tomorrow. They have too much money at stake. http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190306_its_time_to_set_a_deadline_for_the_next_new_gtld_application/
If ICANN opens another round without doing some sort of market sizing exercise, it’s clear they are in it for the money, just like those clamoring the round to open asap.
Arpit Agrawal says
It has always been a doubt whether such an extension would take off! In fact, there are very few extensions like .sbi that are still operating and most of these will die out with time!
I have been discussing this time and again over NamePros regarding the viability of such extensions(even if they are corporate). It doesn’t look like taking off, in near or far point of time!