For years, people picking domain names have been limited to generic, top-level domains such as .com, .net, .org, or to their country’s two-letter domain such as .ca, .uk or .fr. Following a decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), companies can now get top-level domains for their own brands.
For a company to get a name such as .google or .computers, the application fee costs $185,000 and the annual fee to keep the domain costs $25,000. They must also prove they are responsible enough to maintain an entire top-level domain and must actively use the domain or risk losing it to another bidder.
The applicants are able to make a domain out of almost any word they choose. They are also open to use other alphabets following a decision ICANN made in 2009 to approve domain names in non-Roman characters.
The process presents a difficulty in that it is tough to prevent domain squatters from registering tons of top-level domains just to claim ownership over them. This represents a shift in direction for ICANN, who historically has intentionally exercised little control over whether names under .com are truly commercial entities or names under .net have anything to do with network infrastructure. To help manage this new level of control, ICANN is hiring hundreds of consultants to evaluate claims that applicants are established public or private organizations.
The applications open January 12th, 2012 and close April 12th, 2012, with new domains appearing within a year. Whether people will actually use them as a primary website remains to be found out, but it’s very likely that Canon would use canon.com instead of main.canon for their primary URL.
It’s interesting to see how this hinders startups and newer companies from getting their domains. Suppose RIM gets .phone, but later loses popularity as other phone companies rise up to become more associated with phones than RIM. Should RIM still be able to keep .phone? Should RIM even get .phone? What about companies with generic names like .apple? This process should be carefully thought about before they start approving domains here and there.