Fuji Xerox kills off gTLD after rebrand
Fuji Xerox has become the latest multi-billion-dollar company to ditch its dot-brand gTLD.
The Japanese-American company, a joint venture of Xerox and Fuji, has told ICANN it wants to terminate its registry contract for .fujixerox, and ICANN has indicated its intention to let the string die.
The gTLD was not in use, beyond the mandatory nic.fujixerox placeholder site.
That said, the termination appears to be primarily due to a rebranding as the joint venture fizzles out.
Fuji Xerox is, according to Wikipedia, the world’s oldest Japanese-American joint-venture company, at 59 years old. It’s in the document processing space and had $11 billion in annual revenue.
But the companies said last year they would end the relationship, with Xerox no longer providing its tech, leading to rebranding the company Fujifilm Business Innovation. The dot-brand is clearly no longer needed.
Xerox also owns .xerox, and it’s not using that either. There is no .fuji or .fujifilm.
.fujixerox the first dot-brand to jump off the cliff this year, and the 86th in total.
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Xerox is primarily pursuing this application in ICANN’s first round for defensive reasons given the uncertainty regarding when ICANN will be opening a second round. Therefore, although Xerox DNHC is committed to moving forward with a .FUJIXEROX gTLD application, at the time of filing this application there has not been enough time or market information available to fully analyze and evaluate all potential use case options.