How to resolve string contentions sooner

The applicant auction is a private auction to resolve string contentions in advance of the ICANN last-resort auction.

The advantage of the applicant auction is that all the value of the auction stays with the applicants. Moreover, since the contentions are resolved more quickly, ICANN may award the top-level domains to the winning applicants sooner.

What are the key benefits of the Applicant Auction?

Relative to the ICANN last resort auction, the applicant auction has many benefits. The applicant auction:

1. maximizes the value of the domains by putting them to their best use;
2. rapidly resolves contention leading to faster ICANN assignment;
3. allows the applicants to retain the benefits of resolution, rather than sharing the benefits with ICANN;
4. lowers the price paid by the buyer—the applicant with the highest bid; and
5. compensates sellers—the applicants with lower bids—with a share of the buyer’s payment.

Workshops ended yesterday but I am sure interested applicants will learn more here.

A summary of yesterday's ICANN meetings

Simple, fast, efficient:

Kieren McCarthy is an acknowledged authority on the Internet and Internet governance. I also suggest to ckech .nxt, an information service covering the Internet policy and governance worlds.

New gTLDs: lost? Then, read this

ICANN recently set up an extremely interesting web page called the "Applicants' Corner". This page, is an entry point to anything an applicant can be searching for: Trademark Clearinghouse, URS, Objections, etc...

I strongly suggest anyone involved, or not involved, in a new gTLD application to bookmark this page.
It would be appreciated to have an updated date next to each title anytime something new is added. I will send this request to ICANN.

Also, many more news are added daily into the new generic Top-Level Domains group on LinkedIn.

To check the Applicant's corner web page, click here: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/corner

Hypocrisy in new gTLDs: come on...of course not!

The interesting part of this video starts at 0:20.

Again, this video focusses on Donuts, a new gTLD applicant applying for multiple strings, but the fun part of this video is about the fantastic hypocrisy that exists in the world of new gTLDs and which starts at 0:46 when the Internet Property Lawyer starts to criticize Donuts (you will also find much more reading public comments by the way in the comments made by anonymous persons).

These are a few questions to Mr. David E. Weslow, an "Internet Property Lawyer":

1. What do you think about an applicant applying for a new gTLD, which is a generic term such as "grocery", and who wants one single supermarket to own it for himself ?
2. What do you think other Supermarkets in the world would think about this?
3. Do you think it is fair for the average grocery store who would have the use of such domain names but who won't be able to use them beause they are "reserved"?
4. For what reason on earth would one (1) American supermarket become the only legal entity to be authorized to register domain names ending in .grocery and, for example, allow itself to register such a valuable domain names like store.grocery ?

You did not understand this post? Download the public portion of the .grocery application and read its "Mission/Purpose".

An encrypted letter sent to ITU

This is a paragraph I picked up from an answer written to Petko Kantchev, Chair of the Informal Group of Experts, World Telecommunication Policy Forum 2013 (ITU) by the Internet Society (ISOC), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and the Number Resource Organization (NRO):

"While we acknowledge and appreciate the openness in which the discussions of the WTPF-2013 have been held so far, we would hope that WTPF discussions not be pre-constrained to specific outcomes as expressed in paragraph 1.1.5. Furthermore, those contradictions that paragraph 1.1.5 calls to avoid may need to fully disclosed in order for the openness of the WTPF process to be maintained".

Okay...

The letter ends with "we strongly suggest finding an agreement on a main theme first": I would be happy if someone coud explain to me, with no acronym, what the main theme is.

Thank you.

:-)

For more, you can download the letter here (click on the PDF).

Google's search engine is ready for new gTLDs

I recently read about a new search engine for the .XXX generic Top-Level Domain recently launched. Yes, it is possible to search for pornography only.

With niche registries about to launch, these new search engines may become of a serious interest for specific industries and communities.

I myself find it interesting to be able to search in a specific domain name extension only. As a wine and rugby fan, I would love to avoid .COM web sites and focus on .WINE web sites exclusively when it comes to searching an info. Chances are high that content found on a .WINE is more relevant than on a .COM.

Well, Google has always been ready for new gTLDs and here is an example on how to find content on .museum web sites only. Let's try with a search in Virginia for example and see if there is content available on Internet on web sites using .museum domain names:

When in google, enter "virginia" in the search box and look for the advanced search which allows to search in a specific domain name extension. It is located down the search page, look for "Advanced search" (below in yellow):

Then, you should enter ".museum" in the "site or domain" search box (below in yellow) and hit on the button "Advanced Search".

All results found will only be on .museum domain names, you can check the URLs:

Basically, it means that Google may be able to provide much better results according to a search related to a specific community, an industry or even a brand represented by a new generic Top-Level Domain.
The number of mouse clicks to reach the advanced search is important and I doubt that a person searching an information goes as far as this. Shall we ever see any www.google.football or www.google.art domain names to focus on niche strings and facilitate a search? Will a search on Google.com offer the option to target a specific extension?

Future will tell...when ICANN is ready.