gTLD Strategy

We may not know precisely when ICANN will finally publish the full list of new gTLD applications and applicants, but we do know that it will be at least a month from now. And certain companies have come forward over the past few weeks, announcing that they are applying for certain new gTLDs. So while we’ll have to sit tight for the full list, we at least have a small sneak peak of a few of the 2,100+ applications we’ll see on Reveal Day. Here’s what we’re looking at so far:

Google told Advertising Age that it is applying for “several” domain names, saying, “We plan to apply for Google's trademarked TLDs, as well as a handful of new ones.” Those “trademarked TLDs” likely include .GOOGLE and .YOUTUBE, at least.

According to a recent CNET article, domain name registrar GoDaddy is also going after three gTLDs: .GODADDY and two more that it will not disclose. GoDaddy isn’t the only registrar in the game, either: Demand Media, the parent company of registrar Enom, has invested $18 million “in pursuit of its generic Top-Level Domain initiative.” It has not stated which extensions it is going for, but $18 million translates to nearly 100 applications.

NCC Group is applying for .SECURE, according to Ars Technica. Domain Incite has revealed the plans of many other gTLD applicants, including the International Rugby Board’s bid for .RUGBY, ICM Registry’s plans for .SEX and .PORN (to complement .XXX), Primer Nivel’s intention to acquire .BLOG, and the groups of bidders going after .ECO and .MUSIC.

And gTLD Strategy readers will also recall that VeriSign is applying for multiple transliterations of .COM, in addition to a handful of other gTLDs.

This list clearly only scratches the surface of what we will see on Reveal Day, but it does begin to paint a picture of how diverse the list of applicants and strings will likely be.

Last night, ICANN posted a new update about the TAS. The organization has met its deadline of May 8 to inform applicants of whether or not their user names or file names were exposed during the glitch that first became public on April 12.

But the real news is that we finally know when the TAS will come back online – mostly.

ICANN says that it is “targeting 22 May 2012 as the intended reopening date for the TLD Application System.” Once it reopens, the TAS will stay open for five business days, closing for good on May 30 (accounting for the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, May 28, here in the U.S.). (more...)

ICANN’s TLD Application System (TAS) remains offline this week as ICANN is continuing to work through the data in order to determine which applicants’ information may have been compromised during the security glitch. ICANN has said that it will likely take until May 8 to notify all of the applicants whether or not their user names or file names were exposed, but this week, the organization did publish some stats about the TAS delay: (more...)

VeriSign, Inc., the registry that operates .COM, .NET, .NAME, .CC and .TV, published its first quarter revenue figures in a press release earlier this week. The company saw its revenue top $200 million for the quarter, marking a 13 percent increase from the first quarter in 2011. (more...)

As promised, ICANN posted another update about the TAS closure on Friday night, sneaking in just minutes before the deadline it had set of 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT). Essentially, because of the large volume of data that the organization has to sort through in order to fulfill its promise of alerting all applicants of whether or not their data was compromised during the security glitch, ICANN stated that at the time, it was not prepared to make an announcement about when it would reopen the TAS. Instead, the statement promised another update by Friday, April 27 at 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT). (more...)

Last night, ICANN published a new announcement about the ongoing process to fix the glitch that had exposed certain applicants’ user names and file names to other TAS users.

The message was somewhat mixed: while ICANN believes it has fixed the problem, it needs to continue testing it to be sure. The organization is still in the process of gathering information to inform applicants of whether or not their data was affected. As a result, the TAS will not reopen tonight as ICANN had predicted last Thursday. (more...)

The story around the technical glitch that caused ICANN to temporarily suspend access to the TLD Application System (TAS) on Thursday continues to evolve. First, on Thursday night, ICANN informed applicants that the “technical glitch” amounted to this: certain TAS users were able to view other users’ user names and file names while in the TAS. Regrettably, ICANN had first learned of this problem on March 19, but believed that it had adequately addressed the issue. (more...)

This morning, ICANN announced that, due to a number of technical problems with its TLD Application System (TAS), it will be shutting the system down temporarily.

The TAS will be shut down until Tuesday, April 17 at 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT). At that time, the TAS will reopen and remain open until 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT) on Friday, April 20, 2012.

ICANN posted this announcement shortly before 8:00 AM EDT this morning. (more...)

A few weeks ago, we reported on the new batching process that ICANN had proposed that revolved around giving applications a “secondary time stamp.” As of last week, the ICANN Board has approved the system for new gTLD applicants.

You can read about the details of the process, which ICANN has likened to “digital archery” (although “digital whack-a-mole” might be a more apt analogy), in our post, or on ICANN’s New gTLD Program site. But rather than rehash the mechanics of the process, today we’d like to discuss some of its implications. (more...)