Friday, June 22, 2012

Amazon.com's domain power play: We want to control them all

The e-commerce giant is applying for 76 new top-level domains -- and you won't be able to register any of them. What exactly does it have up its sleeve?



by  - cnet - June 21, 2012 

If Amazon.com gets its way -- and that's still a big "if" -- it will soon control 76 new domain extensions on the Internet. Most observers had expected the company to apply for .amazon and .kindle, but it seems that was just for starters: Amazon's ambitions also include a host of generic terms, including the likes of .free, .like, .game, and .shop.

Amazon is looking to nab a slew of compelling names, and if things unfold the way Amazon hopes, the outcome of this power play could reshape the world of Internet commerce -- at least as it relates to the behemoth that is Amazon. Here's the roster of terms Amazon is hoping to grab, excluding some non-Latin names:


Here are the new top-level domains Amazon wants to control.
(Credit: Illustration by James Martin)

While Amazon aims to clean up in what's becoming the biggest Internet landgrab ever, the public -- individuals or business owners -- is fated to play the role of bystander in this cyberdrama. Amazon's names won't be open to the public in the way that, say, .com names are, where anyone can register AnythingTheyWant.com. Want to own Chocolate.shop? Forget it. As Amazon says clearly: "All domains in the .SHOP registry will remain the property of Amazon."
Amazon is among the biggest players partaking in the massive effort by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to vastly expand the domain name system. ICANN has let anyone with the money and technical chops bid for the right to run a so-called generic top-level domain, or gTLD, and last week it revealed which companies and entities are going for which gTLDs, also known as "strings."
More at cnet.

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