The period for submitting applications for new top level domains
concluded yesterday at 5pm, California time. Over 60 applicants
paid a non-refundable $50,000 fee to the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to have the chance of
controlling their suggestions for new top level domains.
Applications included unexpected names such as .museum, .war and
.weather.
ICANN has repeated advice to consumers against pre-registering addresses which do not now and may never exist. ICANN has to choose which applications to accept and there are in some cases as many as five applicants hoping to win the rights to the same top level domain. ICANN is expected to decide which ones to add to the internet’s naming system at a meeting in November.
According to the list of applications posted on ICANN’s web site, only two parties apparently applied to control the .web domain name, which was one of the first anticipated new names. The most popular name was .biz, attracting bids from five competing parties.
It appears that only two of more than 60 applicants were UK companies: The Global Domain Name Registry Limited, which applied for control of each of .jina, .name, .nom, .san and .xing, and Telnic Limited, which applied for .tel.
For the full list of applicants, see ICANN’s site.
