Posted on Tuesday, April 10 2012 @ 16:33 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
AdAge reports Google plans to apply for Google's trademarked TLDs, as well as a handful of new ones. Full details
over here. Several other firms plan to get their own domain, but many aren't interested due to the high cost (initial application fee of $185,000) and the belief that consumers will not adopt these new TLDs.
On April 12, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will stop accepting applications for a new round of generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, the part of a web address that appears to the right of the period ("com" and "org" are among 22 current top-level domains). The application process is expected to result in hundreds, if not thousands, of new gTLDs, which will likely start going live sometime next year.
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"We plan to apply for Google's trademarked TLDs, as well as a handful of new ones," the spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. "We want to help make this a smooth experience for web users -- one that promotes innovation and competition on the internet."
Google refused to provide more details, but it's likely that ".Google" and ".YouTube" will be among the trademark TLDs the company applies for. Google also wouldn't comment on how it would use its new TLDs, but one could see using ".YouTube" as a way to mark a brand's YouTube channel destination -- for example, www.AdAge.YouTube.
