iCANN Reveals Which Companies Went After Unique TLDs


Recently, iCANN revealed the list of gTLDs that were bid on and who bid on them. If you aren't sure what that means, the .com, .net, .gov, and .org part of a URL is the TLD or Top Level Domain.

These new gTLDs are a way for a company to create a ".[anything]" URL. For example, Google could change YouTube's URL to google.youtube or even youtube.google. This is also a way to be able to continue selling unique domain names because you know how hard it is to find a good domain name these days. The industry selling domains cannot easily keep making money unless they expand the possibilities.

As one would expect this has the potential to be pretty powerful, and Google was likely the company that bid on the most gTLDs. Of course the main products like Google, Chrome, Youtube, and Gmail were bid on by Google. However they also bid on more than 100 total words. Here's the list:

Ads, And, Android, App, Are, Baby, Blog, Boo, Book, Buy, Cal, Car, Channel, Chrome, Cloud, Corp, Cpa, Dad, Day, Dclk, Dds, Dev, Diy, Docs, Dog, Dot, Drive, Earth, Eat, Esq, Est, Family, Film, Fly, Foo, Free, Fun, Fyi, Game, Gbiz, Gle, Gmail, Gmbh, Goo, Goog, Google, Guge, Hangout, Here, Home, How, Inc, Ing, Kid, Live, Llc, Llp, Lol, Love, Mail, Map, Mba, Med, Meme, Mom, Moto, Mov, Movie, Music, New, Nexus, Page, Pet, Phd, Play, Plus, Prod, Prof, Rsvp, Search, Shop, Show, Site, Soy, Spot, Srl, Store, Talk, Team, Tech, Tour, Tube, Vip, Web, Wow, You, Youtube and Zip.

As you can see Google definitely tried to make a power grab for anything that could be worth money in the future like Love, Mom, Dad and even Pet.

Of course some of Google's competitors bid on things as well. Microsoft bid on Microsoft, Bing, Windows, Office, and others like Docs, which if you notice on the list above is in competition with Google. Apple only bid on Apple, and Amazon was a huge bidder and bid on 75 words like Amazon, Like, and Zero. Strangely Facebook didn't bid on Like, or any words for that matter.

These new gTLDs can potentially change the game in the not so far off future. Think about if they make .chicago or .boston available to local businesses in that area. With all other things s...

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