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The most contested names are App (13 applications), Inc (11), Home (11), Art (10), Shop (9), LLC (9), Blog (9), Book (9), Movie (8), and Music (8). Just because an application is unique, it may not be successful - applications are subject to a public comment and objection process and "a rigorous, objective and independent evaluation system" according to ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz.
"Asia Pacific was a little under-represented" among applicants, said Adrian Kinderis, CEO of ARI Registry Services. Despite being home to over half the world's population, he observed that only around 15% of the applications were from the region.
Mr Kinderis pointed out that while iiNet has applied for .iinet, neither Telstra nor Optus have applied for their names. Telstra is seeking Yellowpages, however. And while the AFL has joined the MLB (Major League Baseball), NBA and NFL in applying for the corresponding gTLDs, nobody currently wants the NRL or EPL (English Premier League) domains. But Football is being contested by European-based dot Football Limited and US-based Foggy Farms LLC.
Australian universities are notably present in the list. Bond, La Trobe, Monash and RMIT have applied for the corresponding domains, and Open Universities Australia has applied for Courses as well as Open. These universities see the new gTLDs as "a branding opportunity" according to Mr Kinderis. "They've seen this just as a business [does]."
Melbourne and Sydney are being sought by the governments of Victoria and New South Wales as geographic gTLDs.
Page 2: Banks, cars and Google - and your chance to object
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Not surprisingly, several car brands are on the list, including Bugatti, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi, Tata Motors, and Toyota. Holden, Porsche and Rolls Royce are among those that aren't the subject of applications.
Google appears to have applied for more than 100 gTLDs, including 谷歌 (Chinese for Google), Ads, Android, Baby, Blog, Book, Car, Chrome, Cloud, Dad, Dev, DIY, Docs, Dot (plenty of room for confusion there!), Earth, Family, Film, Free, Fun, Game, Gmail (presumably to offer customers the option of @gmail addresses rather than @gmail.com), Google (naturally), Live (though Microsoft is after that too), Love (multiple contestants), Mail, Movie, Music, Nexus, PhD, Prof, Search, Shop, Show, Team, Tech, Web, and YouTube.
Even though non-Latin scripts are supported in domain names, only 116 of the 1930 applications are in scrips such as Arabic, Chinese or Cyrillic. ARI's clients made 161 of the 1930 applications, including 12 in non-Latin languages. Mr Kinderis said
The full list is available here.
If you have a problem with any of the proposed names, now is the time to speak up. "A 60-day comment period begins today, allowing anyone in the world to submit comments on any application, and the evaluation panels will consider them," said Mr Pritz. "If anyone objects to an application and believes they have the grounds to do so, they can file a formal objection to the application. And they will have seven months to do that."
