At an event in London today, domain name regulator ICANN revealed the list of which companies and organizations have applied for their own generic top level domains (gTLDs) as part of a drive to dramatically increase the total number of TLDs available worldwide.
ICANN says that 1930 applications were received from 60 countries around the world. These include 66 using geographic names, and 116 using non-Latin scripts.
In the tech world, applications have come from the likes of Amazon (.amazon, .zappos and more), Google (.google, .youtube, .android and more), Apple (.apple), Yahoo (.yahoo) and Yandex (.yandex).
Some companies have applied for many TLDs. Google has applied for 101 and Amazon, 76.
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Amazon’s applications include a range of both trademarked and generic terms, including: .amazon, .app. .audible, .author, .aws, .book, .bot, .box, buy, .call, .circle, .cloud, .coupon, .deal, .dev, .drive, .fast, .fire, .free, and .game.
Google’s include: .google, .ads, .android, .app, .blog, .boo, .book, .cal, .channel, .chrome, .dog, .drive, .meme and .youtube
Of the disputed applications, .app was particularly hotly contested TLD with 13 applicants, including Google and Amazon.
Now the evaluation process begins. A 60-day comment and objections period now starts today, during which anyone can submit their opinions on the applications, or file a formal objection – for example, if an application infringes on a trademark.
From July 12th, independent review panels will review both the applicants and the proposed TLDs themselves. Applicants need both the finances and the technical capability to run a domain name registry, and domain names must be check to ensure they don’t disrupt DNS. Domains are expected to go live from the first quarter of 2013.
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