From Microsoft to BMW, big brands are buying up .news web domains in a hurry - GeekWire
Online domain provider Rightside expected “. news” to become one of its top new domain extensions since the application window first opened to create — and own — alternatives to the usual website endings like. The Seattle company has already launched more than 30 different domains — called generic top-level domains, or gTLDs — including. More than 1,000 domains were reserved before the extension went live on July 15 and within one week it had already brought in about $1 million in registration fees. It’s just the latest new domain extension to catch fire, though none has gone fully mainstream quite yet. It all started back in 2012, when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) started taking applications for new domains to lay the groundwork for the next generation of the web. Rightside wouldn’t say how much it paid for the extension, but these auctions have gone as high as the $25 million Google paid for. To date, ICANN has introduced 735 new domains , including. Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu rattled off just a few of the brands that have already claimed their slice of the new digital real estate on. news, including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Major League Baseball, BMW and Starbucks. Source: www.geekwire.com
