ICANN warns Google and Amazon over generic domain name applications

INTERNET GOVERNANCE BODY ICANN has come up with the list of names that companies, organisations and countries might want to stake their claim on.

The GAC, or Government Advisory Committee, has published the list on behalf of ICANN, and throws up 242 domains, including .app,.cloud, .book, .movie, .game and .mail... all of which are targeted by Amazon.

"The GAC filed 242 Early Warnings on individual applications. The applicants were all contacted directly, and the Early Warnings have now been posted here: GAC Early Warnings," it says. "Early Warnings mainly consist of requests for information, or requests for clarity on certain aspects of an application."

Early warnings have been sent to Amazon on the above, as well as .tunes, .video and others, while L'Oreal has one for .hair, and Symantec for .antivirus. Google is there too, but under its subsidiary name, the Charleston Road Registry Inc. The Charleston Road Registry has dibs on .blog, .app and .cloud.

Recipients of the early warnings are told that while a problem might not arise over their choice of name, for which they paid $185,000 in application fees, it could be disputed.

The GAC panel is made up of representatives from 50 countries. Each country has filed a warning for its own reasons.

Companies that applied for the top level domain suffixes paid ICANN $185,000 for each application and will be charged $25,000 a year for each top level domain name granted.

Objections have been raised over words where there is already a country specific objection. For example while Delta airlines wants .delta, the river delta state of Nigeria objects.

Others are objected to for competition reasons, so we find Australia opposing Amazon's .store because Store "is a common generic term relating to a market sector."

Some successful, but seemingly generic terms do not make the list. Apple for example, has applied for .apple. According to the list no early warning has gone out for that name. µ