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All gTLD confusion decisions in one handy chart

Kevin Murphy, August 27, 2013, Domain Registries

Dirk Krischenowski of DotBerlin has produced an interesting chart plotting all the new gTLD string confusion decisions to come out of ICANN and its objection panels to date.
He’s kindly allowed us to reproduce it here. Click to enlarge.

Each string-pair’s percentage of similarity, as determined by the Sword algorithm, determines its position on the Y-axis, while the color of the circle indicates which way the decision went.
It’s a nice way of visualizing the fact that while Sword may have been instructive in the String Similarity Panel’s determinations it’s not an overwhelming factor in String Confusion Objection decisions made by International Centre for Dispute Resolution panelists.
You can download the chart as a PDF here.

Insurance TLD draws interest

Kevin Murphy, November 12, 2010, Domain Registries

An initiative to create a top-level domain for the insurance industry appears to be attracting support in German-speaking countries.
dotVersicherung plans to apply for .versicherung (.insurance) in the first round of new TLD applications next summer, according to its web site.
The domain would be reserved for insurance companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Judging by its web site, which is one of the more comprehensive I’ve seen from a new TLD initiative, it has picked up a fair bit of interest from insurance companies already.
The organization reckons it will cost about 2 million euros to launch the TLD, and it currently appears to be inviting investors to get involved.
It disputes the idea that .versicherung is too long for a TLD, saying that there are already 25,000 domains in .de that contain the term at the second level and that most visitors will use search engines, rather than type-in, to find web sites.
It looks like the organization has been around several months, and is currently doing a publicity tour of its target nations. It also looks like Dirk Krischenowski, CEO of dotBERLIN, is involved in an advisory capacity.
I’m getting this information via Google Translate, by the way, so it may not be 100% reliable.
Hat tip to Jean Guillon, who’s been turning the ability to spot new TLD initiatives into a fine art recently.