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The stupidest gTLD applications I’ve seen so far

Kevin Murphy, June 17, 2012, 14:44:46 (UTC), Domain Registries

Who the hell advised these guys?
Mitek USA, a maker of prefabricated building components (hinges, brackets, etc), has applied for four new generic top-level domains with the shoddiest applications I’ve seen so far.
For pretty much every question that requires any thought to answer, the company has simply replied “TLD will not be resold. Purchased for brand protection only.”
The phrase appears 13 times in each of the four applications.
The applications — for .mitek, .connectors, .sapphire (a brand) and .mii — therefore all appear to be a colossal waste of money.
With no answers to any technical questions beyond “TLD will not be resold. Purchased for brand protection only”, there’s no way they can pass the technical portion of the Initial Evaluation.
The bids, therefore, are completely useless. Even if the strings had been contended (they’re not), there’s no advantage to having a horse in the race if it’s guaranteed to fall at the first fence.
I ask again: who the hell advised these guys?

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Comments (11)

  1. Sedari says:

    Hey Kevin
    No one is likely to put their hand up after your post!
    In any event, a colossal waste of money and goes to my earlier point to you about attrition of applications. It will be great to see some slicing and dicing of the predicted fall out of applications from the revealed 1930.
    Given all the contention, we can expect to see a very much slimmer actual set of strings that could potentially be delegated. And a growing outflow from ICANN’s coffers as refunds are given.

  2. Volker says:

    From what I can see in these applications, they probably did not bother to get any consulting. It also seems that the poor sod who got saddled with the application writing probably had no clue or interest in the project.

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      I agree. My question was largely rhetorical. I think it’s pretty clear nobody advised these guys.

  3. Rob Hall says:

    I am willing to bet there are a ton of consultants out there now offering their services to them. They do get one more chance to amend their answers and pass the secondary evaluation.

  4. Rubens Kuhl says:

    We had a prospect that approached us 3 days before closing (first closing date, before TAS glitches were disclosed) saying they found it pretty hard to fulfill the technical part and asking for help… they thought that as brand all they needed to do was to edit DNS zone files.
    They’ve since withdrawn from the process.

  5. Stardom says:

    …………..”A BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY COMPANY ”
    even warren buffett pisses money away

  6. Michele says:

    There’s a load of quite odd applications in there.But I’m personally a lot more concerned about the likes of Amazon and Google trying to corner generic namespaces for themselves: http://www.internetnews.me/2012/06/14/big-brands-trying-to-corner-generic-namespaces/

  7. zuuie says:

    I’m waiting for a domain guru’s top twenty of the new gTLD’s. Anyone?

  8. London 23 says:

    .whocares
    All of the gtld’s will fail anyways. What’s the diff if the application is completed properly or not? Might be a blessing in disguise to be eliminated right away. Beats the slow, painful and expensive death the others will face.

  9. Investor says:

    I wish i had more money than brains

  10. Andreas says:

    Kevin.. little birdie tells me you were after .mii 🙂
    lol

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