Google wins .map and .search

Google has secured two gTLDs representing two of its core services.
The company has won .search and .map, fighting off competition from Amazon, Donuts, Famous Four Media for .search and Rightside and Amazon for .map.
All the losing bidders have now withdrawn their applications.
Both strings were due to head to ICANN auction April 29, but appear to have been settled privately instead.
That means the winning bids will not be disclosed.
Google plans to operate .map as an open gTLD in which anyone can register.
It had originally planned to keep .search domains limited to itself, until ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and others complained about so-called “closed generics”.
Its updated .search application talks about restricting .search to sites that offer search functionality that adheres to a certain technical standard.
Specifically, domains in .search will have to follow a certain URL format (example.search/?q=query, the format used by Google itself) for queries.
It’s going to be very interesting how Google goes about implementing the plans in its application. We could be looking at some innovative or possibly controversial services.

Warren Buffett party firm beats Google to .fun

An 80-year-old seller of party supplies, owned by Warren Buffett, has won the rights to the new gTLD .fun, after the other two applicants withdrew.
Oriental Trading Company plans to operate the gTLD as a “restricted” space where only the company and its partners can register, according to its application.
Quite why this isn’t on hold as a “closed generic”, I don’t know.
The application states .fun will be:

an authoritative Internet space for OTC, its affiliates and partners where OTC can develop an unlimited number of domain names dedicated and relevant to “fun” and to provide Internet users with content, services and products they need, while being assured of brand authenticity.

The other two applicants were Google and Dot Strategy. Both applications have now been withdrawn.
OTC sells balloons, party hats, banners and such. It was acquired by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2012 after filing for bankruptcy protection.
In other withdrawal news, games maker Konami today became the latest company to dump its plans for a dot-brand, in this case .konami.

Google eliminating domains from search results

Google has made another move to make domain names less relevant to internet users.
The company will no longer display URLs in search results pages for any web site that adopts a certain technical standard.
Instead, the name of the web site will be given. So instead of a DI post showing up with “domainincite.com” in results, it would be “Domain Incite”.
Google explained the change in a blog post incorrectly titled “Better presentation of URLs in search results”.
Webmasters wishing to present a company name or brand instead of a domain name need to publish metadata on their home pages. It’s just a few lines of code.
Google will make a determination whether to make the change based on whether the name meets these criteria:

Be reasonbly [sic] similar to your domain name
Be a natural name used to refer to the site, such as “Google,” rather than “Google, Inc.”
Be unique to your site—not used by some other site
Not be a misleading description of your site

Code samples and the rules are published here.
It strikes me that Google, by demanding naming uniqueness, is opening itself up for a world of hurt.
Could there be a landrush among non-unique brands? How will disputes be handled?
Right now the change has been made only to mobile search results and only in the US, but Google hinted that it could roll out elsewhere too.

Google launches com.google

Google has launched com.google, one of its batch of 2015 April Fool’s Day jokes.
Visiting the domain today will reveal a reversed perspective on the usual Google home page.

Even the results pages are reversed.

It’s probably the most inventive use of a dot-brand new gTLD to date.

Google leaks 282,000 private Whois records

Google has accidentally revealed registrant contact information for 282,867 domain names that were supposed to be protected by a privacy service.
The bug reportedly affected 94% of the 305,925 domains registered via Google Apps, an eNom reseller.
The glitch was discovered by Cisco and reported to Google February 19. It has since been fixed and customers were notified yesterday.
Google acknowledged in an email to customers that the problem was caused by a “software defect in the Google Apps domain renewal system”.
It seems that anyone who acquired a domain with privacy through Google Apps since mid-2013 and has since renewed the registration will have had their identities unmasked in Whois upon renewal.
Names, addresses, emails and phone numbers were revealed.
Due to services such as DomainTools, which cache Whois records, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. The information is out there for good now.
It’s a pretty major embarrassment for Google, which recently launched its own registrar.

Google buys .app for over $25 million

The fiercely competed new gTLD .app has sold to Google for a record-breaking $25 million.
The company’s Charleston Road Registry subsidiary beat out 12 other applicants for the string, including Donuts, Amazon, Famous Four Media, Radix and Afilias.
The auction lasted two days and fetched a winning bid of $25,001,000, more than any other new gTLD to date.
The previous high is believed to be .blog, which I estimate sold for less than $20 million.
Because it was an ICANN-run “last resort” auction, all of the money goes into ICANN’s special auction proceeds fund, which previously stood at just shy of $35 million.
Previous ICANN auctions have fetched prices between $600,000 and $6,760,000.
Google originally proposed .app as a closed registry in which only Google and its partners could register names.
However, after the Governmental Advisory Committee pressured ICANN to disallow “closed generics”, Google changed its application to enable anyone to register.

Generics versus brands as two more gTLDs are sold

Two more new gTLD contention sets have been settled by auction, one a case of a portfolio applicant prevailing over a closed generic applicant, the other a case of a brand owner paying off a portfolio applicant.
Donuts has won the right to .jewelry over $10 billion-a-year jewelry firm Richemont, owner of brands including Cartier.
Richemont applied for several TLDs, some of which were generic terms. It was awarded .watches uncontested, but apparently didn’t want to fork out as much as Donuts for the matching .jewelry.
Google, meanwhile, won the two-horse race for .moto against Rightside. This one’s interesting because it’s basically a case of Rightside forcing Google to pay up to own one of its own brands.
Google owns a trademark on “Moto” due to its acquisition of Motorola Mobility a few years ago, but Rightside applied for it in its generic sense as an abbreviation of “motorcycle” or “motorbike”.
Google had filed a legal rights objection against its rival for .moto, but lost. Now it’s been forced to cough up at auction instead.
Prices, as usual, have not been disclosed.

Schilling laughing as Uniregistry beats Google to .lol

Uniregistry’s portfolio of quirky new gTLDs grew today. The company seems to have beaten Google to .lol in a private deal.
The two companies were the only ones to apply for .lol, and Google’s application was formally withdrawn today.
As usual for private contention set settlements, the winning price has not been disclosed.
Uniregistry has 18 delegated gTLDs in its stable, with five more currently uncontested applications (.lol makes six) waiting in the wings.
I like .lol as a gTLD. It’s a punchy, short, meaningful string that certainly belongs to the right of the dot.
I can see it being deployed in the near term by the incessant sewer of BuzzFeed clones that are increasingly stinking up social media, which could give increased visibility and helpful viral marketing.
Longer term, there may be a worry if in future the kidz stop using “lol” and start viewing it as something their parents say, but we’re probably a ways from that yet.

Private auction settles controversial plural gTLD fight

A private auction has been used to settle a new gTLD contention set containing two different strings for the first time.
Afilias has won the right to run .pet after Google withdrew its application for .pet and Donuts withdrew its bid for .pets.
The two strings, one the plural of the other, had been placed into indirect contention by ICANN after a String Confusion Objection panel controversially ruled in August 2013 that .pet and .pets were too confusingly similar to be allowed to coexist.
This means that Donuts has been forced to withdraw an uncontested application.
Notably, it was Google that filed, fought and won the SCO complaint, and it didn’t even wind up with the TLD it wanted.
The final settlement of the contention set reflects ICANN’s inconsistent policy on plurals. Several plural/singular combinations — such as .career(s) and .photo(s) — already coexist in the DNS.

Google beaten to .dot for a paltry $700k

Dish DBS, a US satellite TV company, has beaten Google to the .dot new gTLD in an ICANN auction that fetched just $700,000.
It’s further proof, if any were needed, that you don’t need to have the big bucks to beat Google at auction.
Dish plans to use .dot as a single-registrant space, but unusually it’s not a dot-brand. According to its application, the company:

intends to utilize the .dot gTLD to create a restricted, exclusively-controlled online environment for customers and other business partners with the goal of further securing the collection and transmission of personal and other confidential data required for contracted services and other product-related activities.

Google had planned an open, anything-goes space.
.dot was the only new gTLD contention set to be resolved by ICANN last-resort auction this month. The other applicants scheduled for the November auctions all settled their contests privately.