.AFL .UBank .CBA: Major Aussie names among winners in the domain name race.
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The new top-level domain name (gTLD) applications revealed in London as over 1900 companies scramble to get their own Internet name.
Locally, Commonwealth Bank (.CBA) , National Australia Bank (.Nab) and AFL (.AFL) all applied for domain name as did Apple (.Apple) , .Google, .Android and .Microsoft.
.Java, .Fujitsu, .Amazon and .Intel were also among the other tech notables. Internet stalwart Google applied for over 100 names in all including others like .lol.
A total of 1,930 new gTLD applications were received over a period of several months, the body in charge of Internet names, ICANN, revealed in London yesterday.
Other interesting names include .Sex, .Music, .Gay and .Pay.
It costs around US$185,000 to apply for a domain name meaning only the biggest companies in the world can do so, coining ICANN over $350m in the process.
There are currently just 22 domain names globally including .Com,. Org and .Net.
The first round of names should go live early 2013 but it seems several companies are sparring over ownership of names including Amazon and Google along with 11 other companies all of whom want the name .app, reports AP.
Some names had multiple applications and all 1900 plus will now be subject to a public comment and “independent evaluation,” says ICANN. Objections can be filed within a seven month window, so expect several battles between major names ahead.
When approved these names will mark the largest expansion in the history of the Internet’s Domain Name’s ever, ICANN said.
“We are standing at the cusp of a new era of online innovation,” said Rod Beckstrom, CEO, ICANN.
“That means new businesses, new marketing tools, new jobs, and new ways to link communities and share information.”
Of the 1,930 applications received 66 are geographic names and 116 applications are for Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs, for strings in scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic.
There were a total of 303 are from Asia-Pacific region, 911 from US and 675 from Europe.
Of the 41 application from Latin America/Caribbean and Africa these would be the first domain names ever from those regions.
