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ICANN's
"Big Reveal"
was
held this morning (U.S. time) in London
where the domain name system's oversight
body released the names of those who
have applied to run new TLDs as
well as the extensions they want to run
(you can see
every single one of those 1,930
applications here, including
where the applicant is from and what
their contact email address is). Of
course a lot of applicants want to run
the same TLD, so 751 of
those applications were for 230
extensions that at least one other party
is also |
Image
from Bigstock |
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going
after. That means the highest number of
new TLDs that could eventually be
approved from this round is 1,409. |
The
most sought after new TLD was .app with 13
applicants wanting to run that extension
(interestingly enough, Apple was not one
of them). Three other extensions drew an
applicant pool in double digits - .inc
and .home are desired by 11 each
and .art is wanted by 10
applicants (Michael Berkens compiled a
list of all of the most
contested new TLDs here).
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ICANN
hopes that the multiple parties who
applied for a single extension will get
together on their own to produce a single
entity to claim the TLD. If that
does not work rights to run the
extension will be auctioned off
to the highest bidder, likely driving
the price into the millions (it
cost $185,000 each just to
apply to run a new TLD).
Now
that we know who the players are and
what they are playing for we moved on to
the next phase, which could be called
the Big Wait. It is going to take
a long time for ICANN to review |
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the
applications (none have been
approved at this point) and for the
issues surrounding the contested ones to
be worked out. Expect it to be 2013 or
possibly even 2014 before you see the
first new TLDs live on the
Internet. |
Another
big issue is digital
archery - ICANN's plan to process
the applications in batches of no more
than 500 at a time. Those who do not make
it into the first batch may be waiting a year or
two before the next batch will even begin the
process. Obviously, that makes digital archery a
high stakes game that has become very
contentious among applicants who
feel they may not get a fair shot at being
included in the first batch. All
have put a lot of money at risk and need to get
their extensions to market as soon as possible
to start recouping their investments.
So
while today's Big Reveal produced a boat load of
interesting information, there are still a
lot of innings left to be played in
the new TLD game before anyone can start
registering domains in the new strings.
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