STRAAT Investments has just revealed 13 new GTLD’s it’s applied for. The company also owns one of the best travel domain portfolios in the word. One of it’s principals, Juan Calle, is the driving force behind CO Internet, the company who operates the .Co registry.
CO Internet and the .Co extension have been a huge success story with over 1.3MM registrations in the 2 years since they launched.
Obviously Juan and his team know how to operate a succesfull domain name registry. It will be interesting to see how many of these extensions, all of which will be in contention, wind up being awarded to them.
Below are the gTLD’s that were applied for by STRAAT Investments:
.APP
.BOOK
.CORP
.DESIGN
.GMBH
.GROUP
.INC
.LAW
.LLC
.LTD
.MOVIE
.TECH
.WEB
Interesting philosophy they have about them not going to auction. I just have a gut feeling some strings may get blindsided.
will his gTLD’s be utter failures too?
Smart move. All the ones for which they’ve applied are far superior to that silly .CO.
none will get more paid regs than .co
Hope he sinks and the smirk insults he had to share. attacks to the domain community.
If it wasn’t for domainers and his agendas, .co would not have had any success.
Everybody is going after .web. I don’t get it. I don’t think .web makes sense. It’s like getting a tatto of the word “tattoo” on yourself.
Everything.something is on the .web.
Just my opinion.
@JP
That’s the point. The one true universal generic.
Many that didnt’ get the .com they wanted will choose .web
Better potential for development on any of these extensions over .CO. So, should we call .CO a wrap now? My guess is that marketing money will go into these new extensions, they’ll get a better return. New .CO regs flourished early on, now growth has slowed considerably. Why not push one of the new extensions in the same way. Even if you believe in .CO, one has to admit, there’s only crap left to hand reg.
Both .law and .book are winners. The .movie seems like a winner but geeks are familiar with .mov files already. I would want both. Short domains hold value no matter how much voice activated computing occurs in the future.
Also .geek should sell regs 🙂
I think .travel is the biggest winner of the old extensions. With the paradigm shift it becomes utterly natural to type this into the browser.
But I still like SPECIFIC rotd so .Hawaii .Bermuda etc will really work well.
there were past attempts at dot web. some people have wanted that tld for a long time. it might seem nonsensical, but those “bizarre users” (e.g. the ones who type in long contiguous strings and click on ppc) may actually “understand” dot web. who knows, there might be people right now typing it everyday thinking it exists.
each day there are still new users of all ages using the web for the first time who have absolutely no clue what they’re doing. never fear, new gtld’s to the rescue!
a lot of stuff with web commerce and fundraising is “you gotta see it to believe it”. user behavior, including user spending, seems to defy common sense. you simply don’t realize some things are going to sell (because it makes no sense why anyone would pay) until you open up shop and they start paying. dot web might be one of those things. it’s so nonsensical it would probably work.
As far as .Web goes, I have seen at least 10+ applications for it so far..but ICANN has a problem.
Image Online Design has a .Web application that is still pending.
ICANN never turned it down.
If ICANN awards it to any other company, they could face legal issues.
Brad
From WebTLD.com –
“Image Online Design and the .Web Internet Domain Registry are pleased that ICANN is moving forward with the introduction of additional gTLDs…
Image Online Design first proposed the .Web gTLD in 1995 and was prepared to begin operations in 1996 with the publication of Draft Postel II. After a delay of four years, Image Online Design participated in ICANN’s new gTLD process in 2000 and, while not selected at the time, was assured that the application was still pending for the next selection round. All other applicants for .Web in the 2000 selection round received other gTLDs, and Image Online Design’s application is the only application for .Web still pending. Image Online Design believes that its application should be granted in the next selection round before any new applications are accepted.
Twelve years after our initial proposal, we remain ready to begin operations of the .Web registry. We are optimistic that selection will proceed in an objective and fair manner, and that the treatment of those applications still pending from the 2000 selection round are considered as promised. As the longest-standing prospective registry operator, we look forward to putting our experience to work.
Christopher Ambler
Chief Technical Officer
Image Online Design, Inc.
The .Web Internet Domain Registry”
thanks for that Brad, very interesting
I now need to refill my popcorn tub
.web is the best of a bad lot and can actually see suckers looking for a domain for first time thinking .web is cool
I guess they all applied for it? the usual suspects.
does that mean they all ponied up $185k for .web and when 1 person gets it, all the others lose their $185k?
damn I hope so lol
Wouldn’t .inc be ‘too similar’ to .in and .info?
Wonder how many of these will make it past the objection stage.
And the auctions for the 230 contested gtlds won’t be cheap either.
Samit
Your right it is possible it will go that way.
Also inc.com may object and there probably is a TM holder somewhere in the world for “inc” as well
It does cost money to object and proceed through the process so its also a question of how many company’s or others that are out there willing to pay to object when there is nothing to win or gain from the objectors view except the non-existence of a new TLD
BTW thanks for all the re-tweets greatly appreciated
All those applicants in contention now realizing that their $185k is gone. If they’d used the cash as toilet paper at least they’d have got some value from it.
None of these will touch the popularity of dotCO.
David
the one benefit that dotCO has is that it is short and has meaning. I think it is like the only 2 letter extension with the best meaning. Deadly combination indeed.
@John
DotME and DotTV both have their appeal, but the most important factor is that these three were promoted with relatively low competition and captured some nice quick money from speculators. This is not going to happen with a tsunami of gTLDs charging the field all at once.
This is the end of .com and all other extensions. Why Google would want to index/rank extensions which it does not own??? The first and second page of Google search results will carry websites with extensions owned by Google only. I don’t see how .com, .net, .org would not disappear. Google would not decide to enter this gtlds business if the purpose of it was not using these gtlds in the way I above described. They know what they are doing. Juan Calle also knows that, that is why he also entered this gtlds business