Domain Name Shake-Up
jun. 14 2012
The biggest shake-up in the domain naming arena is taking place, with the imminent release of new top level domains. This enables companies to get their own brand name, so Microsoft could have a domain name of www.choose.microsoft. An even bigger marketing land grab opportunity exists for companies to nab generic industry words like .travel and .app.
Here are the most popular domain submissions.
Handbags at dawn to choose the winner (or a panel decision from ICANN, which isn't quite so exciting, but makes more sense.) The whole world waits to see what the largest companies in the world will do, and these results are surprising. Apple only put in for one application under their own name, and Google put in a whopping 101 submissions. Each name submission costs $185,000 so this will cost Google a grand total of $18,685,000. A drop in the ocean compared to potential return on investment for the names however, and let's be honest Google can afford to stump up the cash.
No cola wars going on here, with both Coke and Pepsi being notably absent from the whole process.
ICANN revealed the applications were received from 60 countries, as illustrated below:
No big surprises in terms of geographical distribution, as global companies would most often be headquartered in Europe or the US. Making up some of the 15.7% attributed to the Asia Pacific region were Australian banks and universities.
Three of the four major Australian banks have submitted applications including:
- ANZ - .anz;
- Commonwealth Bank – .cba, .commbank, .netbank; and
- NAB – .nab, .ubank.
Five Australian universities across Australia have applied, interestingly representing the only universities globally to apply:
- Bond University - .bond;
- LaTrobe University - .latrobe;
- Monash University - .monash;
- Open Universities Australia - .courses, .study; and
- RMIT - .rmit.
Once the approval process is complete, the new domain names are expected to go live next year, and we can expect to see some interesting domain name marketing taking place to recoup those huge investments.
