Second .online gTLD bid and third ‘guardian’ dot-brand withdrawn

Directi appears to be the last man standing in the three-way tie-up for .online, following the latest new gTLD withdrawals.

Namecheap has dropped its .online application, closely following Tucows, which dropped its bid a couple of weeks ago.

The three companies announced a deal in March to see them cooperate to win the contested TLD, but at the time it wasn’t clear which applicants would pull out.

Directi’s bid (filed by DotOnline Inc under the Radix brand) remains. It has already passed Initial Evaluation, which may be part of the reason its application was chosen as the “winner”.

The gTLD is still contested, however. Directi is competing with Donuts, I-Registry and Dot Online LLC.

Separately today, a curious two-way dot-brand battle seems to have had its final twist, with Guardian Life Insurance’s withdrawal of its application for .guardianlife.

The insurance company and newspaper publisher Guardian News and Media had both applied for gTLDs containing the string “guardian”. There were originally five, but only two remain.

It now looks like Guardian News will get .theguardian, having previously conceded .guardian to its brand rival and dropping its bid for .guardianmedia.

It appears that there’s been more than a bit of strategic applying, and maybe some deal-making, here.

Neither remaining application is contested, and neither have objections. It’s likely that .guardian is captured by the Governmental Advisory Committee’s advice against “closed generics”, however.

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Tagged: .guardian, .guardianlife, .online, .theguardian, directi, ICANN, namecheap, new gTLDs, radix, tucows