ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (the guys who manage the entire domain names system) has unlifted the lid on the 1,930 applications who wants to have their generic top-level domain names (gTLDs). The United States are highly represented with 884 domains located in the United States, while Australia has 41.
Several companies are competing for generic domains such as .auto, .app and .book – .app appears to be the largest with 13 applicants applying, including Google and Amazon. Google itself has also applied for over 100 domain names, including .android, .car, .chrome, .dog and even .here. Yes, Google wants to have .here.
Many, however, are just simply registering their own names like .iinet, .bing and .youtube. Also surprising is that public broadcaster SBS is also applying for the .sbs domain name; and Australia Post have applied for .auspost.
Not all of the applicants will succeed, with suggestions that more than 1,000 could be live in a year. Each organisation will have to pay $25,000 per year to keep the domain name. Applications will be dealt 500 at a time.