After withdrawing its application for .GMC, General Motors has withdrawn 2 more of its new gTLD applications with ICANN.
GM has withdrawn its applications for .Cadillac & .Chevrolet which become the 16th and 17th new gTLD application to be withdrawn.
Officially General Motors still has a two new gTLD application remaining for .Buick and .Chevy but that seems like only a matter of time until those applications are withdrawn as well and reflected on ICANN.org.
In all GM spent close to $1 Million dollars to apply for 5 new gTLD’s; .GMC, .Cadillac, .Chevrolet, Buick and .Chevy.
GM will receive a 70% refund of the application fees it paid ICANN
As with .GMC, the new gTLD’s for .Cadillac & .Chevrolet where planned to be operated on a closed basis.
“Applicant plans to operate the proposed .cadillac gTLD as a restricted, exclusively-controlled TLD and as such it will not be commercially offered for registration to the general public. ”
:The proposed gTLD will be a restricted, exclusively-controlled gTLD where only Applicant, affiliated entities and authorized business partners will be permitted to register second-level domains for Applicant business purposes only for a term of one to ten years”.
At this level – it is all about public perception – and why did they (GM or the other fortune 500’s) want this is the first place – yes ?
Brian
Could have been defensive registrations or a change of corporate philosophy.
Brands were not pushing for the new gTLD program, just reacting
Michael –
Yes – it all sticks – just like getting the same table dance for $20 vs. $100 – it is all based on how hard someone howells at the moon 🙂
Hello MHB,
The .com Mainstay of the Webs infrastructure remains and in the atmosphere of dozens of technologies obsolescing every 3 months the .COM is still the prize. In a world where new technologies consistently obsolesce look for Standards that prevail.
.COM Foundations are the Standard destinations of the worlds largest corporations.
.Whatevers are the flavor of the day that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, until they are spit out of the system . BEWARE !!
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
$100 for a Table Dance?
Need to change clubs my man
something new going on here – when you set your drink down and go upstairs where there is no license – just a “place” to “hang” out apparantly – maybe its part of that new pot law that just passed in Colorado 🙂
Anothone one falls off the .brandwagon again x3. Saw this one coming when the last anouncement came out. There will be more to fall off as well. .generics will hold.
Hello MHB,
I would not be surprised to see Mass Withdrawals as .COM Corporations read the tea leaves more and more. Owen Frager the other day had some ideas on this that you may all want to check out.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
The current “brand” TLD model that is actually a Shared Registry System shared with no one but yourself is too costly without a good communications plan. If in Round 2 we give up the EPP/WHOIS/Global DNS requirements and make brand TLDs as simple as operating a domain, brands will come.
Hello MHB,
Google is only in the gTLD game as a hedge position, or at least they should be if they think this whole thing out. Personally I think they are shitting their pants right now. The introduction of the gTLDs will spur type in traffic without question !
Has anyone really sat back and analysed Googles entry into .Whatever land and by doing so what they have inadvertantly revealed to ALL WHO CAN SEE.
By their participation they are admitting the signifigance of typed in Traffic. Now they are part and parcel to the crowd that will pay attention to type ins and what brand they are going to at the RIGHT OF THE DOT. AND The LEFT OF THE DOT
This is firing up a .COM corporate Back Lash that Owen Frager has spoken about. Googles attempted WEB of deception is BACKFIRING ON THEM.
Watch as the Web of deception unfolds and Google eats some of their own poison.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
This is sad, I don’t understand such a decision.
@jeanguillon
I would say that it’s more predictable than sad. GM already owns the .COMs of the gTLDs they applied for, so why the redundancy? Do the gTLDs add any significant value that their .COM variants don’t already provide, or might they simply cause confusion?
Companies jumped on the gTLD bandwagon without much forethought because they saw everyone else doing it. But now that the hype is dying down it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to see that some might be displaying some measure of buyer’s remorse. What will be interesting to see is how many others will follow.
“This is sad, I don’t understand such a decision.”
Yes – it is sad how dumb Corporate America is in that they applied for a unneeded TLD in the first place that would have done nothing but confuse their clients, employees and vendors,
@Grim
I don’t understand why spending money into this to drop it then. I would definitely point my .COM to my new .BRAND
@BrianWick
I agree it may confuse their clients in the beginning but certainly not their children in the coming years.
“but certainly not their children in the coming years.”
Yes – and at that time I will have been long gone out of this business – not much has changed in the last 15 years andnot much will change in the next 15 years with consumer’s ambilical cord to .com – so many confuse the technical aspects of tld vs. the .com brand that has been burned into the consumer by ACPA, UDRP and federal courts in general.
jeanguillon wrote:
> I don’t understand why spending money into this to drop it then.
> I would definitely point my .COM to my new .BRAND”
When GM spent the money they likely didn’t understand exactly what they were getting into. They only heard the hype, how this would change the Internet, etc, etc, etc. Plus everyone else seemed to be doing it, so if they didn’t want to miss out, they better do it as well.
Now that some time has passed, it appears they have a better understanding of things… and this action shows that. As the news around this circulates, it’s likely other companies will gain some perspective and also begin to question if they should continue on, or cut their losses and withdraw their applications. In any event, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
We don’t know why GM choice to apply in the 1st place, maybe it was all defensive to be positioned in case a company like Chevys Restaurant http://www.chevys.com/ applied
Maybe they have had a chance in their decision makers and people that support the application left the company.
There are a lot of possibilities.
Maybe they will apply in later rounds as well
@ Grim,
I agree with your assumptions, and these are just the easy recognizable cracks in the
( gTLD FOLLY)
The Smart Money will abandon ship as this poorly designed Marketing Strategy is rolled out .
Launch of gTLD Folly will be pushed out even further as litigation will plague this EPIC FARCE.
The whole concept is already obsolesced.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)