new gtlds New gTLD extensions - ICANN says, use them or lose them!

[News]

Some of the world's biggest brands, including Intel, Nike, Target, Netflix, Lego, UPS and the NFL have been told to put their namesake dot-word domains live in the next three months or risk losing them altogether.

Many of those companies have been dragging their feet over running their own piece of the internet, however, because they're not sure what, if anything, they want to do with it.

Having pressured them into signing a contract to run their top-level domain last year, ICANN is now threatening to kill the contract if they don’t get it up and running.

Companies that will have to decide whether to use or lose their dot-brands between now and August include: Aetna, AllState, BestBuy, Comcast, DHL, Dunlop, Dupont, Ericsson, HBO, HGTV, Intel, Lego, Mattel, Netflix, NFL, Nike, Pfizer, Prudential, QVC, Target, TJMaxx, UPS, Volvo, Zappos, Zippo and others. ®...

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[forge]

Zippo is a good summation of the global reaction to the torrential rollout of gTLDs.

 

[Silentptnr]

I read that article and was surprised those companies even entered into those contracts. I also read that there are more companies looking to back out. The process of cancelling takes months.

 

[Kate]

Perhaps they contemplated the gTLD program like they do defensive registrations: "you never know, let's grab this thing before someone else does, let's lock the competition out of it, the marketing department says this is good for a branding image, no more cybersquatting problems..."
etc

A few months/years later:
"Hey hardly anybody is using new extensions, do we still need this ?"

 

[jmcc]

Big corporations tend to move slowy. ICANN needs these brand name TLDs to point to as examples of usage. The problem is that a large corporation will have multiple locations with many people sharing the same name. Thus remapping internal e-mail allocations will take time. And time is one thing that ICANN does not have when it comes to the credibility of some of the new gTLD decisions.

Regards...jmcc

 

[LucidDomains]

I wonder what the contract says. If the contract says nothing about use it or lose it, I wonder if the big dogs will take ICANN to court.

 

[Silentptnr]

It does have a deadline in the contract. I read that it does.

 

[DNScholar]

Most of the corporate ngtlds will close like .doosan

 

[decode]

Wow, nothing like threatening big companies to use a product they've already paid for.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Why should ICANN care if they are used or not?

If they want to keep paying for it without using them, why does that matter? Most of these appear to be trademarks, it's not like someone else can legally use them.