The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, has released the full list of the companies bidding on new personalisable top level domains, known as generic TLDs (gTLD). These take the place of the “.com” in a url, and allow companies to have websites at addresses like “video.youtube” or “gameofthrones.hbo”.
Any company bidding on a domain name has to pay a non-refundable $185,000, and if there are multiple bidders, ICANN will assess them on “technical merits” and may hold an auction. Winners are then also obliged to pay high annual fees to the corporation.
Not every company bid on domain names using their own name. Google, for instance, has already revealed that it is bidding on names like .youtube and .lol, but on the ICANN document the bidder for those names shows up as “Charleston Road registry”, and it is difficult to tell whether this is a Google shell or a company bidding for multiple domains for multiple clients.
Some of the companies that did bid for domains are below:
Guardian News and Media ltd bid for .gdn, .guardian, .guardianmedia, .observer, and .theguardian. Total cost: $925,000.
Amazon EU bid for 76 names, including .app, .author, .book, .cloud, .drive, .fast, .hot, .jot, .joy, .kindle, .like, .mail, .new, .shop, .smile and .zero, at a total cost of $14.06m
The British Broadcasting Corporation bid for .bbc. Cost: $185,000
Apple inc. bid for .apple. Cost: $185,000
Wal-Mart stores bid for .一号店, .asda, .george, .grocery, .samsclub and .walmart. Total cost: $1.11m
Nominet UK (the UK’s registrar, responsible for the .uk TLD) bid for .wales and .cymru at a cost of $370,000
Hasbro international bid for .transformers, cost $185,000
Microsoft corporation bid for 11 names, including .azure, .bing, .windows, .skype and .xbox. Cost: $2.035m
Sony, through three subsidiaries, bid for .playstation, .sony and .xperia. Cost: $555,000
Ladbrokes bid on .bet and .ladbrokes, costing $370,000.
Uniregistry, corp bid on 55 names including .sexy, .hiphop, .christmas, .pizza, .tattoo and .yoga. It cost $10.175m
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