Google’s $25 million .app domain finally has a launch date
One of the questions I get asked fairly regularly is “When is .app coming out?”, but until today I haven’t had a good answer.
Now I do. Google has finally released its launch timeline for the could-be-popular new gTLD.
.app will go to sunrise March 29, the company said last week.
Trademark holder exclusivity will end May 1, at which point a week-long Early Access Period will kick in.
There will be an extra fee, so far undisclosed, for EAP buyers.
Finally, on May 8, everyone will get access to the domain as it goes into general availability.
Registry pricing has not been disclosed.
Unusually for a new gTLD, Google plans to keep its Trademark Claims service — which notifies registrants and trademark owners when there’s a potential trademark infringement — open indefinitely, as opposed to the minimum 90-day period.
.app was delegated in early July 2015, so it’s been a loooong wait for people interested in the space.
Google paid $25 million for .app at an ICANN public auction in February 2015. At the time, that was a record-breaking price for a gTLD, but it’s since between dwarfed by the $135 million Verisign is paying for .web.
Google also said that it’s currently working on a launch plan for .dev, another gTLD that folk have been asking about, but that for now it’s focused on .app alone.
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I think they are a couple of years too late with this. Will be a quarter of what it could have been back then.
Kevin writes:
“.dev, another gTLD that folk have been asking about”
Really? People are asking about this TLD? On what planet?
My mistake. I was thinking of .prod, a similarly confusing TLD. http://domainincite.com/17278-victims-of-first-confirmed-new-gtld-collision-respond-fuck-google