As the ICANN draw of December 17th is less than two weeks away, one issue that has been debated on Facebook is the importance of the draw for those new gTLD’s strings in contention.

Today ICANN settled one issue giving IDN applications preference, but not giving preference to any other applicant including Geographic applicants which had lobbied ICANN for priority as well.

So now with all issues settled all eyes turn towards the Draw where applicants are hopping to get a good number.

Certainly for those who are the only applicant for a string, the draw which will determine the timing of everything from Initial Evaluation through delegation, is quite important as the difference could getting out of the gate months earlier.

But in the case where there are 2 or more applicants for the same string, its clear that an applicant no matter how low (closer to 1) his draw number is, has to wait until all the other applicants in the contention set get their applications evaluated as well.

So if your an applicant for .web and draw #1 and (other than IDN’s) and another applicant draws 1,900 guess what your application gets evaluated first but other than waiting for number 1,900 to complete there isn’t much you can do.

Of course if #1,900 drops out and asks for a refund then he is out of the equation, yet it seems to be taking ICANN months to process a withdrawal of an application.