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ICANN Reveals New TLD Application List
Eighteen months after first announcing expansion of the TLD space, ICANN has published the list of new gTLDs that have been applied for. A cursory glance reveals that.app was pretty popular, with 13 applications. Now begins the seven month objection period (but you have to be a large organization to lodge any). angry tapir writes in with info on how duplicate applications will be resolved. From the article: "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has released statistics about the applications for new top-level domains — so-called 'dot word' domains along the lines of .web and .bank ... Two hundred and thirty of the domains proposed by applicants will become the subject of ICANN's dispute resolution process — which involves an attempt among applicants for the same domain to come to a joint arrangement, followed by an auction if that's unsuccessful. There were 751 conflicting applications for domains in total, which in many cases are likely to involve generic suffixes like .secure."
Who exactly benefits from this other than ICANN and the registrars? Because I'm fairly sure it isn't the public in general.
Considering that many users still put "www.apple.com" in the Google search box rather than the address bar, then choose Apple from the list of results.... I don't think it will be a problem. Besides, with people visiting sites with foreign TLDs, such as .ca, .au, .pl, .ru, .cn - I don't think they'll be too overwhelmed with choices other than .com, .net and .org.
From what I understand the application fee is 6 figures, I can't imagine anyone can afford to TLD squat. He's probably an attorney who specializes in this kind of bureaucratic paperwork and has lots of different clients who want TLDs.
Someone get on that quick!