The latest news in domain names is most notably ICANN’s June opening of a new type of extension: dot-somethings. From now on, traditional generic extensions (.com, .net, .biz, .org…) and geographic extensions (dot-country codes) will live along side something.hotel, something.newyork and even anything.mybrand. These new extensions can only be obtained through an application process, costs will be high (from$100,000 to $500,000) and requestors must be able to prove they canmanage the technical side of these extensions. Consequently, the new domain names will not be available to just anybody, but will be reserved for certain professionals or major accounts.

How will this affect brand names?
A priori, a littlemore complexity in the already chaotic world of domain names. A posteriori? The question that comes up is whether it would be worth while for a company (likeMicrosoft, Nestlé or Nike) that already has a portfolio of dot-com and country code names, to switch to dot-company. Improved security and uniformity of the portfolio would be unquestionable advantages, but what to do with the current names? Should they keep the mand pay twice? Or let them go, and risk their being picked up by speculators with bad intentions? The question is open-ended… We will come back to this subject in a future issue.