Tonight a new gTLD went live
Just as people are starting to get seriously stressed about the imminent introduction of new gTLDs, a timely reminder that this is actually the third time ICANN has run a new gTLD program.
.post has just gone live.
The gTLD, which was applied for by the Universal Postal Union as part of the 2003/2004 round, has been in limbo since it was approved in December 2009, while the UPU figured out what to do with it.
It’s going to be tightly restricted to members of the international postal community, so it doesn’t carry any of the baggage of the last new gTLD launch, .xxx.
The registry has switched back-end providers since it first applied. It had planned to go with CORE, but following a competitive bidding process last year it’s moved to Afilias instead.
I’m not currently aware of any live second-level domains; tests on www.post and nic.post and a few other usual suspects are treated by my browsers as search queries.
The news of .post’s addition to the DNS root was tweeted by ICANN chief security officer Jeff Moss this evening.
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I’m not seeing any live sites either, I too get a search result for http://www.post and when using firefox I get directed to http://www.post.com instead.
I find this story interesting. It’s an epic moment in gTLD history, but it is just a footnote. Just like .museum I doubt we will ever see one of these extensions.
You never know.
Maybe when every household has a 3D printer .post will be the standard way of mailing gifts to family 🙂