As new gTLDs enter a new phase, the first wave of announcements crashes

Go Daddy, Web.com and the Public Interest Registry were among the first to reveal their new generic top-level domain plans as ICANN’s new gTLD program enters the “reveal” phase.
Announcements from several companies were timed to closely coincide with the closure of ICANN’s TLD Application System at a minute before midnight UTC last night.
After a false start (false end?) on April 12, and weeks of subsequent procrastination, the end of the new gTLD application window seems to have gone off without a hitch.
We’re now entering a new phase of the program, one which is expected to hold far fewer secrets.
Between now and the official Big Reveal, currently targeted for June 13, I’m expecting a deluge of announcements from new gTLD applicants, no longer scared of encouraging competitive bids.
Any company with any hope of standing out from the crowd of almost 2,000 applications needs to make its presence felt as loudly and as early as possible.
.web
The first to do so was number-three registrar Web.com, owner of Network Solutions and Register.com, which confirmed its long-expected bid for .web shortly before midnight.
It’s one of many companies with a claim to the gTLD, in what is certain to be a fiercely fought contention set.
The firm reckons, dubiously, that it has rights due to its trademark on Web.com, which I predict will be anything but a slam dunk argument when it comes to a Legal Rights Objection.
“We believe we possess the natural platform from which to successfully market the new .WEB top level domain since we are the sole owner of the Web.com trademark as issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office,” CEO David Brown said.
I wonder what the other 300 or so owners of web.[tld] domain names think about that.
.bank and .insurance
The Association of National Bankers and the Financial Services Roundtable, both US trade groups for the banking industry, provided the first post-TAS announcement to hit my inbox, at 0006 UTC.
The groups have confirmed their joint bids for .bank and .insurance, having wisely decided against the less SEO-friendly, less intuitive .banking, .invest, .investment, and .insure.
These proposed gTLDs will be secured and restricted, but they still face the substantial risk of objections from European banking regulators.
There’s also one other unconfirmed .bank applicant.
.home and .casa
Go Daddy has also revealed its two applications, giving the scoop to Domain Name Wire. It’s applied for .home and the Spanish translation, .casa, in addition to the previously announced .godaddy.
While they look benign on the face of it, I’m expecting .home to face opposition on technical grounds.
It’s on DI PRO’s list of frequently requested invalid TLDs, due to the amount of traffic it already gets from misconfigured routers.
Go Daddy may also face competition scrutiny if it wants to act as a registry and registrar, given its overwhelming dominance of the registrar market.
Both applications are also likely to find themselves in contention sets.
.ngo and .ong
The Public Interest Registry cleverly got its .ngo and .ong bids some big-readership attention a few hours ago by letting Mashable think it was getting a scoop. Ahem.
To be fair, the .ong application – a translation of .ngo for Spanish, French and Italian markets – was news. Both will target non-governmental organizations, of which there are millions.
The .ong bid stands a reasonable chance of being challenged due to its visual similarity with .org – which PIR already manages – but ICANN’s similarity tool only gives it a score of 63%.
.cloud and .global
Finally this morning, CloudNames announced applications for .cloud and .global, two unrestricted gTLDs being pitched explicitly as alternatives to .com, .biz and .info.
“A .cloud domain will allow businesses and individuals to have their own cloud on the Internet. Likewise, a .global domain will allow businesses to secure a position on an international level,” CEO Rolf Larsen said in a statement.
They’re the first examples of both strings to be announced, but CloudNames expects them both to be contested. I suspect the buzzy .cloud will be the harder to obtain.

Europe to warn consumers about .bank “risks”

The European Banking Authority has told ICANN it believes that proposed financially-oriented gTLDs such as .bank are dangerous and should be banned.
The EBA, the European Union’s central banking regulator, said it plans to issue consumer alerts, warning people about “the risks of these new naming conventions”.
In a letter to ICANN published today, EBA chair Andrea Enria said that a global gTLD such as “.bank” would not give consumers a good guide as to whether the bank was regulated in their own country.
Financial gTLDs have a “not-yet-identified benefit” and could create a “moral hazard”, Enria wrote. The EBA is also worried about the cost of trademark enforcement, he said.

the EBA believes that it is not feasible to address most of the supervisory concerns of its members on the risks of misuse of the proposed gTLDs and calls the ICANN to reconsider its plans for allowing the such of the above mentioned gTLDs and ban the establishment of such gTLDs altogether.

The EBA was formed just over a year ago as the successor to the Committee of European Banking Supervisors. Its members are the heads of the financial regulators of the EU member states.
The letter could come as a blow to the American-led .bank application proposed by the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable’s BITS division.
The BITS project envisages a tightly controlled namespace for banks, governed by a fairly strenuous set of security measures.
But the establishment of a .bank gTLD is one area where we are almost guaranteed to see ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee exercising its new-found objection powers.
If the Europeans and the Americans do not see eye to eye, .bank will not see the light of day.

BITS may apply for six financial gTLDs

BITS, the technology policy wing of the Financial Services Roundtable, may apply to ICANN for as many as six financially-focused new top-level domains.
The organization is pondering bids for .bank, .banking, .insure, .insurance, .invest and .investment, according to Craig Schwartz, who’s heading the project as general manager for registry programs.
(UPDATE: To clarify, these are the six strings BITS is considering. It does not expect to apply for all six. Three is a more likely number.)
Schwartz, until recently ICANN’s chief gTLD registry liaison, told DI that the application(s) will be filed by a yet-to-be-formed LLC, which will have the FSR and the American Bankers Association as its founding members.
It will be a community-designated bid, which means the company may be able to avoid an ICANN auction in the event that its chosen gTLD strings are contested by other applicants.
“We’ve looked at the scoring, and while it may not come into play at all we do believe we can meet the requisite score [for a successful Community Priority Evaluation],” Schwartz said. “But we’re certainly mindful of what’s happening in the space, there’s always the possibility of contention.”
There’s no relationship between BITS and CORE, the Council of European Registrars, which is apparently looking into applying for its own set of financially-oriented gTLDs, Schwartz said.
It’s not a big-money commercial play, but the new venture would be structured as a for-profit entity, he said.
“It’s relatively analogous to what’s happened in the .coop space, where after 10 years they have only about 7,000 registrations,” Schwartz said.
It sounds like pricing might be in the $100+ range. Smaller financial institutions lacking the resources to apply for their own .brand gTLDs would be a likely target customer base.
Interestingly, .bank may begin life as a business-to-business play, used primarily for secure inter-bank transactions, before it becomes a consumer-facing proposition, Schwartz said.
He added that it would likely partner with a small number of ICANN-accredited registrars – those that are able to meet its security requirements – to get the domains into the hands of banks.
VeriSign has already signed up to provide the secure back-end registry services for the bid.