No mention of .london at ICANN London
The forthcoming .london gTLD didn’t get a look in during the opening ceremony of ICANN 50, held this morning in London.
The host city gTLD’s complete absence from the two-hour event — it wasn’t mentioned once — would have escaped notice had it not been for the abundance of plugs for .wales and .cymru attendees received instead.
.cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. The gTLDs are to be launched simultaneously.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones was given stage time to announce, in between anti-English quips, that the Welsh government is to dump .gov.uk in favor of the two new Welsh gTLDs.
Later, a Welsh male voice choir (presumably a famous one) took to the stage to sing a couple of songs and announce that they too are planning to use .wales and .cymru for their web sites.
Nominet chair Rennie Fritchie also plugged the upcoming launches during her five-minute slot.
You’d have been forgiven for wondering if you’d accidentally got off the plane in Cardiff.
Where was .london?
Did Dot London Domains seriously drop the ball here?
Or did .london’s absence have something to do with the fact that the host ccTLD and meeting sponsor, Nominet, is the registry for .wales and .cymru but was beaten to the .london back-end contract by Minds + Machines?
If you find this post or this blog useful or interestjng, please support Domain Incite, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.
Yes, the lack of a mention of London was very noticable. Why didn’t Ed Vaisey mention it? Isn’t he proud the London has it’s own gTLD?
The guys who run the .london TLD must be complete amateurs if they cant even arrange some exposure when the international internet community visit the home city in question.
They even had their thunder stolen by a registry from a different country.
.londoff
This article does not seem newsworthy.
Do registrars really care that dotLondon, expected to be one of the biggest selling new TLDs, does not get mentioned during an ICANN opening ceremony?
Maybe dotLondon are focused on meeting with their registrars and spending money marketing the domain versus worrying about getting mentioned during the ICANN kick off meeting. I mean did you see the big GoDaddy ad outside the venue which ICANN and non-ICANNers can see? I think this article and that ad have done more for dotLondon than being mentioned in the opening ceremony – which is what everyone would have expected.