From AAA (that’s the American Automobile Association Inc.) to Zulu (a geographic domain applied for by Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd.) the Internet got its first look at the new domains we may soon be typing into our address bars.
The new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) represent the new land grab opportunity on the Web.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is opening up the Internet’s real estate by allowing more private operators to manage suffix registries. Just as Symantec Corp.’s VeriSign Inc. is the owner of the dot-com and dot-net domains, soon many firms will be operating domains named whatever they like. There are currently 22 gTLDs and ICANN is expected to accept between 500 and 1,500 of the more than 2,000 applications received for new Web address names.
Google applied for 101 domains using a unique corporation name, Charleston Road Registry Inc., including .Chrome, .Cloud, .Dad, .Gmail, .Kid, .Search, .Tech, .Web, and .Zip. Because Google is already an ICANN-accredited registrar, the search giant wants to use Charleston Road Registry to manage the gTLD portfolio as a registry, Google says.
Domains that are seeing multiple applicants, meaning they will be in contention, include:
- .App, applied for by 13 firms including Amazon, Google, and Merchant Law Group
- .Corp, applied for by six firms.
- .Docs, applied for by Charleston Road Registry Inc. (Google) and Microsoft Corp.
- .INC, applied for by 11 firms
- .Love, applied for by seven firms.
- .LTD, applied for by seven firms.
- .News, applied for by dot News Ltd, Hidden Bloom LLC, Merchant Law Group LLP, Uniregistry Corp, DotNews Inc., and two others.
- .Wine, applied for by Afilias Lted., dot Wine Ltd., and June Station LLC.
- .Web, applied for by DotWeb Inc., Charleston Road Registry Inc., Web.com Group, Inc. and three others.
Significant addresses on the list include:
- .Apple, applied for by Apple Inc.
- .Epson, applied for by Seiko Epson Corp.
- .Media, applied for by Tucows TLDs Inc.
- .MLS applied for by the Canadian Real Estate Association
- .Visa, applied for by Visa International Service Association
- .Windows and .Xbox, applied for by Microsoft Corp.
- .Winners applied for by the TJX Companies Inc.
- .Yahoo, applied for by Yahoo! Domain Services Inc.
- .Yellowpages, applied for by Telstra Corp.
- .Xerox, applied for by Xerox LLC
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