For the past few months Internet commentators having been discussing the possibility of ICANN allowing petitioners to request new domain name extensions to be released. ICANN is the not for profit governing body of all domain name extensions and are the only body with the power to add or remove domain name extension.
To date top level domains like .com, .net, .org have all been governed by ICANN and this will continue indefinitely. In the last few days ICANN has publicly announced the results of a recent vote on granting access for companies, organisations and governments to request new domain extensions.
For example, Coca Cola could apply to ICANN to have the domain name extension .coke registered. Now the benefits of a registration like this for Coco Cola would be the major brand appeal. Instead of running television advertisements with CocaCola.com they could now advertise with something like get.coke. You can obviously see the benefits of this kind of brand integration for any large company.
But this is just one application of this new ICANN decision, for the more savvy and potentially risk taking applicant you could apply for extensions and then profit from the resell of domain name’s on those extensions. As an example I could apply to purchase .sale and try to resell domains with the .sale extension after it.
The potential profiteering from this decision is limitless and it will be interesting to watch what the more aggressive companies and internet marketers will do. Unfortunately we will have to wait a little while though as ICANN is not expected to grant any new domain extensions until July 2012.
If you are looking at this for business be warned that it is not going to be cheap for you to do this. A simple application for a domain extension is $165,000 and this does not guarantee approval. Your business, organisation or government then needs to go through a very strict process. The process designed by ICANN is meant to stop profiteering from other people’s brands and business.
ICANN will be busy with applications I predict in the new future and should see a strong year of income growth. Large brands and companies will be scrambling to be the first company to secure your new domain extension and test what it does for their marketing and branding campaigns. Unicef has already announced their intention to make an application as have many other brands.
At this point though many companies are staying quite on whether they will be applying for a new extension as they are wanting to protect their market position. Stay tuned over the next few months to see how things unfold for ICANN and the businesses who apply.
A word of warning to business owners, make sure you don’t get caught up in any domain name extension buying scams. They are bound to start showing up very shortly, stay vigilant and well informed.