gTLD Strategy

The fact that 1,766 new gTLD applications participated in ICANN’s Prioritization Draw held yesterday is interesting for two reasons: first, because such a high percentage (92%) chose to participate, and second, because some very interesting applications opted to not participate in the Draw. Last night we took a look at the first new gTLD applications drawn. Today we’ll examine which will be at the back of the line.

Let’s start with some numbers. On Reveal Day, we found out that 1,930 applications were submitted in total. Since then, 13 applications have been withdrawn (you can see the full list by going here and selecting “Application Status” and then “Withdrawn” from the two drop-down menus at the top of the page), leaving 1,917 applications still in play. Of those, 1,766 participated in the Draw, meaning 151 applications opted out. Like with the Draw, ICANN sorted IDNs first; after the 108 that participated in the Draw, only eight remained. That means that slots 1,775 through 1,917 are held by a combination of generic, branded and geographic, non-IDN gTLD applications.

A handful of brand owners decided to opt out of the Draw, including auto makers General Motors (.BUICK, .CADILLAC, .CHEVROLET, .CHEVY and .GMC), Ford (.FORD and .LINCOLN), and Volvo (.VOLVO) – despite the fact that competitors Audi, Volkswagen, BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Fiat and Suzuki all participated. Of the auto companies, Fiat’s application for .FIAT came out first, with draw number 155. Similarly, Estée Lauder opted out for its .CLINIQUE, .LAMER and .ORIGINS applications, whereas L’Oréal, with applications for .LANCOME and .KEIHLS, among others, opted to participate.

What was perhaps even more interesting were the companies that decided to buy into the Draw for some applications but not others. Richemont, the luxury goods manufacturer that applied for 14 strings, opted out on four applications: its two IDN strings and its applications for .WATCHES and .JEWELRY. Almost all of Richemont’s other applications are for branded terms except for one, .LOVE, which actually came out on top of Richemont’s lot, drawing number 466. .LOVE is in contention with six other applicants, whereas .WATCHES is not in direct contention and .JEWELRY only has one direct contender. One possible explanation for the split is Early Warnings: the four applications for which Richemont opted out all received Early Warnings from the GAC, which may have caused Richemont to choose to delay.

In a similar fashion, Google opted to keep nearly a quarter of its applications (24 of the 98 that remain after the company withdrew three) out of the Draw. These applications span different terms and registry models, but by far the most interesting string left out of the Draw was .SEARCH. Google will be in contention with three other applicants for the string, including Amazon. Another applicant for .SEARCH, dot Now Limited, also opted out of the Draw, while the remaining two applicants, Donuts and Amazon, drew numbers 1,179 and 1,305, respectively.

Finally, Fidelity, which seemed to be planning an aggressive new gTLD strategy by not only applying for its brand, .FIDELITY, but also industry-defining terms .IRA, .MUTUALFUNDS and .RETIREMENT, decided to opt out of the Draw for all four applications. On the other hand, none of its applications is in contention, so the company may just be taking the extra time to launch its new gTLDs.

The Prioritization Draw for new gTLDs is now well underway. Despite a bit of a rough start with the live stream of the Draw, ICANN has been steadily plugging away through the 1,766 applications that opted to participate. With 1,930 applications submitted, this figure represents 92 percent of applications – meaning less than 200 applications chose to not participate in the Draw.

ICANN drew 108 IDN gTLD applications first before moving on to the non-IDN gTLD strings. Of the first 100 non-IDN gTLDs drawn, 47 were for branded terms or generic terms submitted by a major brand. Of the remaining 53, five were for geographic terms (.RUHR, .KOELN, .HELSINKI, .TOKYO and .PARIS), and the final 48 were for generic terms. (more...)

Today kicks off the sale of tickets for ICANN’s Prioritization Draw in Los Angeles, California. The sale will continue until the morning of Monday, December 17. The Draw will take place later that day.

We've explained the Prioritization Draw previously here on the blog, but for a refresher, you can check out the video below, where FairWinds’ consulting associate Molly Burke discusses the details of the Draw. (more...)

New gTLDs are on track to begin delegating into the Root Zone as soon as the second quarter of next year. With the first launches fast approaching, brand owners and other new gTLDs applicants have been gathering information in order to form strategies and make decisions about how they will use and market their new gTLDs. But a crucial piece of information has been missing – until now, that is. (more...)

It can be a scary world out there in cyberspace, even for big companies with ample resources. Just ask the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others, who recently saw their domain names ending in .RO, the Romanian ccTLD, hacked. The attack, which hijacked the DNS records of the domain names and pointed them to a server in the Netherlands, came less than a week after Eboz, a little-known hacker group out of Turkey, attacked these and other companies’ .PK (Pakistan) domain names in mid-November. (more...)

As we mentioned in our last post, GAC Early Warnings came out late last Tuesday night. In total, 39 GAC member countries issued 242 Early Warnings on 143 unique gTLD strings.

Then this week, certain new gTLD applicants received another notice, not from the GAC, but from Linda Corugedo Steneberg, Director at the European Commission’s Communications Networks, Content and Technology Directorate. This letter named 28 applied-for gTLD strings (some with multiple applications) that may “raise issues of compatibility with the existing legislation and/or with policy positions and objectives of the European Union.” Some of these strings had also received Early Warnings, but there were also some new faces that popped up on the list. The letter pointed out that an application’s inclusion on the list should in no way be considered a form or representation of GAC Early Warnings, but rather a signal to applicants that they should engage in further discussions with the European Commission. (more...)

As promised, ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) filed its Early Warnings on individual applications for new gTLDs on November 20.  The 242 Early Warnings can be found here.

As outlined in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook (Section 1.1.2.4), the GAC can use Early Warnings to send a notice that an application may be regarded as potentially sensitive or problematic to certain governments or that the application could violate national laws. These Warnings are only notices and not formal objections, and as ICANN stated when it filed the Warnings, the Early Warnings "mainly consist of requests for information, or requests for clarity on certain aspects of an application." (more...)

We largely focus on brand owners here on the gTLD Strategy blog – how brand owners will be affected by new gTLDs, how those brand owners that applied for new gTLDs can effectively integrate them into their digital strategies, etc. But all told, strategic companies were only a portion of the total pool of new gTLD applicants. By FairWinds’ calculations, approximately one-third of all new gTLDs applied for were brand names. When you strip out the duplicates, brand names make up about half of the total group of potential future gTLD strings. (more...)

UPDATE: ICANN has just posted the presentation for today’s webinar. In those slides, ICANN states that the Prioritization Drawing will take place on December 17 at the Hilton LAX is Los Angeles, CA. The sale of the tickets required for the Drawing will take place from December 12 through 16 and on the morning of December 17, also at the Hilton LAX. ICANN is encouraging applicants to purchase their tickets before the drawing date.

There is also a slight change to the timing for Clarifying Questions (CQs). CQs about geographic-term gTLDs will be issued on November 26 as planned, but all other CQs will be issued in January. Applicants will have four weeks to respond, instead of two as ICANN had previously stated.

(more...)