nation
Plain old .com will have a whole lot more company
- Article by: MICHELLE MALTAIS , Los Angeles Times
- Updated: June 13, 2012 - 8:18 PM
Nearly 2,000 proposals for new domain names were filed worldwide.
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Google hopes to inherit the Earth -- or at least .earth. And Amazon wants to bring you .joy. It's probably no surprise that they both want .you.
Those were among the 1,930 applications for new generic domain names -- replacing the familiar .com seen on most commercial websites -- in an online land grab.
The domains are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.
Many of the applications were to be expected. Companies including broadcaster ABC, BMW Group and Yahoo Inc. staked their claim to their names. Nissan, though, brought back its old brand in .datsun.
It's no surprise that the company that already owns .xxx went for .adult and .porn.
Two companies in particular have a significant number of applications, and several that overlap. Amazon and Google both went after .game, .movie and .wow for example.
Amazon seemed to focus on its core with .author, .book, .read and .buy. Google selected some specific career areas -- .cpa, .phd and .prof among them. It's also making a play for the family with .baby, .kids, .mom, .dad and .pet.
Among the more curious ones Google applied for are .lol, .boo and .rsvp. This may give some insight into what future forays it may have in mind.
Somewhat surprisingly, Apple didn't make a play for .music or .tunes or any of its iProducts. Just .apple.
Some municipalities got in on the action, so you might see .paris in the near future. Sixty-six of the applications are for geographic names, and 116 applications are for internationalized domain names in scripts such as Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic, according to ICANN.
Applications came from 60 countries and territories, with the majority from North America and Europe.
Many of the 1,930 proposals were duplicates. Suffixes in contention include .bank, .secure, .app and .web. ICANN is encouraging competing bidders to work out an agreement. It will hold an auction if the parties fail to reach a compromise.
And don't start committing the new domains to memory quite yet. A vetting process that may take a year or two is just beginning.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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