ICANN reveals TLD application list, businesses dominate

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said that they would reveal all applications for generic top level domains (TLDs) yesterday and when they did, it seemed businesses like Apple and Good were at the forefront. The full list of TLDs applied for can be seen here, and what's interesting are the various reasons that companies have applied for the domain names that they've applied for. For instance, Amazon has applied for .app and .author, which could help them in their pursuit of dominance in application hubs as well as online book selling. There are 11 others bidders for .app, making it a very popular TLD. Symantec has applied for .antivirus and many companies have applied for .blog. Google has applied for tlds like .app and .android through Charleston Road Registry, a third party domain registry it seems.

The list is out. The verdict is yet to come

There are several companies that have applied for names of their own products, for instance, BBC has applied for .bbc, Microsoft has applied for .bing, and the Australian Cancer Research Foundation has applied for .cancerresearch. It seems that more than just brand and service identification, there are many bidders who want to buy specific top level domains, so they can generate revenue off of licensing fees. For instance, Google has applied for .love, Amazon has applied for .book, and many individual cruise services have applied for .cruise.

ICANN revealed that there were 1,930 bids for 1,409 top level domains. The deadline for submitting applications for the top level domains was the 30th of May and the bulk of companies that met this deadline were from North America and Europe. 883 out of the 1,930 applications received were from the United States alone. There were around 100 applications for top level domains in languages using lettering other than English, which includes Chinese, Arabic and Thai. Furthermore, 17 applications were from Africa and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said that to have that many applications from Africa is encouraging, and that it is a significant expansion.

According to TechCrunch, About $350 million was received from top level domain applications. ICANN says that the money will go towards the process of reviewing these applications, as well as any problems and risks that might arise out of different top level domains. However, some applicants have already backed out from their applications, resulting in $3.5 million in refunds. Each application can cost upto $185,000, however, ICANN provides financial assistance to organizations, particularly those from more economically disadvantaged countires, that cannot meet application costs. ICANN will now go through a multi-step process to determine, which TLDs will make the cut and which won't. They will review whether names of the TLDs are too similar to each other, whether they meet technical requirements, whether the names are geographical and whether the applying company meet financial, technical and operational capabilities to run a registry.