If you missed the news yesterday, there’s some big shake ups coming in the way top level domains (gTLDs) are allocated to new websites. gTLDs are the last sequence of letters in a URL, and at the moment only a few select organisations are allowed to manage national domains like .uk and .tv, or global ones like .com and .org.
That’s changing, as the arbiters of all things internet, ICANN have allowed commercial interests to pitch and pay for new gTLDs, with an eye to launching them early next year. Yesterday, they published a list of nearly 2,000 proposed additions to the gTLD registry along with the names of the people and companies pitching them.
And the games industry doesn’t seem to give a fig.
The list includes proposals for .music, .adult, .book, .blog and – the most wanted of all – .app. 13 different companies pitched for that one, including Amazon and Google, unsurprisingly. Curiously, .home is the second most popular idea.
But as far as games go? Looks like the industry has treated the whole affair with disdain, preferring to stick to tried and tested .coms etc, or hashtags and Facebook links. There’s .xbox and .playstation, for example, but not even Microsoft wants .pc. There’s .aol and .amazon, but no .ubi or .blizzard, who’ve also sniffed away the chance to own .wow. Nikon have swooped in to protect their name, and even Auntie’s gone and tried to bag .bbc, but .ea and .sega are conspicuous by their absence.
In fact, as far as I can see, none of the major third party publishers or PC developers have leapt to grab their own piece of cyberturf. The only actual games company to have gone after .game (popular, with five companies interested) is the Chinese online specialist which is working on Battlefield Online for EA, ChangYou.
Weird, when you think about it. Why is no-one interested? The full list is over here – please post below if I’ve missed something.
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