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.dot is coming very soon

New new gTLD registry Dish DBS has revealed the launch dates for its .dot gTLD, and it’s coming pretty soon.

Information filed with ICANN shows that .dot is due to go to sunrise in just a couple weeks — from July 21 to October 19 — with a 12-day Early Access Period where early adopters can pay premium prices starting the next day.

General availability is scheduled for November 2. Pricing has not been revealed.

If you’re wondering about making a play for dot.dot, forget about it — the registry is using that as its primary domain for the gTLD.

The space will be open to all, with Dish describing it as “designed for builders and the things they create… products, communities, brands, or ideas worth a name of their own”.

It’s Dish’s second gTLD launch this year after .latino, which went GA on June 12.

.latino hasn’t exactly leapt out of the gates — it has fewer than 800 names in its zone file today and Google results are showing mainly a TLD-hopping movie piracy site and a Vietnamese gambling site.

Google beaten to .dot for a paltry $700k

Kevin Murphy, November 20, 2014, Domain Registries

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.