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- .hot is for hookers? Amazon’s first premium regs revealed
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.hot is for hookers? Amazon’s first premium regs revealed
Amazon Registry made three new gTLDs available to non-trademark-holders on Monday, and so far a handful registrants have taken up the offer of premium Early Access Period pricing.
The five-day EAPs for .free, .hot and .spot see prices start high and decrease each day until May 17, when they’ll settle at standard general availability pricing.
While the wholesale prices have not been published by Amazon, the registrar 101domain was retailing them for $6,299 on day one, $3,299 on day two, $1,399 on day three, $799 on day four, and $199 on day five.
GA pricing for .hot at 101domain will be $59.99, while .free will be $44.99 and .spot will be $29.99.
The early adopter(s) in .hot seem to be viewing it as a sex-related TLD along the lines of .xxx, .sex or .sexy. All the day-one registrations (in multiple languages) look set to be used for escort services.
The domains that popped up for the first time in the May 13 zone files were:
be.free
bible.free
sql.freeacompanhantes.hot
escort.hot
escorts.hot
incontri.hot
prepagos.hot
trans.hothigh.spot
hub.spot
The only new domain in the May 14 zones appears to be live.free. They’re not exactly flying off the shelves so far.
Because the zone files are generated at midnight UTC and Amazon’s EAP daily price-increase cut-off is 1259 UTC, it’s not possible to say for sure how much each registrant paid for their domain names.
.free domains to finally arrive as Amazon reveals three gTLD launches
Amazon Registry has revealed launch dates for three of its long-dormant gTLDs, and they have the potential to be the most popular of its patchy portfolio.
.free, .hot and .spot are to go to sunrise April 2, according to a notice on Amazon’s web site and paperwork filed with ICANN.
The Trademark Claims period, which pretty much always coincides with the start of general availability, is set for May 12.
Details of pricing and any possible registration restrictions have not been published.
All three gTLDs have been in the root since 2016, just sitting there doing nothing. Amazon has 54 gTLDs in total, 10 of which are dot-brands, but most of the generics remain stubbornly unlaunched.
Its half-dozen Japanese-script domains have been around the longest, but its biggest success to date has been .bot, which has about 14,000 names in its zone file.
Amazon launched .deal and .now last year but the former has yet to hit 10,000 names and the former still hasn’t hit 1,000.
Amazon had to pay off four other applicants for the right to run .free.
Another 11 new gTLDs won at auction
It’s been a busy week for new gTLD application withdrawals, with no fewer than 11 contention sets getting settled over the last few days.
First, as predicted, Radix won .online, after I-Registry withdrew the last remaining competing application, but only with a little help from its friends.
Radix is to form a new joint venture with Tucows and NameCheap to run .online. Each company threw in $4 million to $5 million to cover the cost of the auction and seed funding for the yet-to-be-formed new registry entity.
Another auction saw .site also won by Radix, as a standalone applicant, after withdrawals from Interlink, M+M, Google and Donuts.
.dog went to Donuts after withdrawals from Minds + Machines and Google. Donuts also won .live, after an earlier withdrawal from Microsoft and one this week from Google.
The hotly contested .cloud went to Aruba after withdrawals from M+M, Symantec, Amazon, Google, CloudNames and Donuts.
.boats was won by DERboats after Donuts withdrew.
.book has gone to Amazon, after withdrawals from R.R. Bowker, Famous Four Media, Donuts, DotBook, M+M, Global Domain Registry, Google and NU DOT CO.
Amazon also won .hot, after Donuts and dotHot (affiliated with .jobs) withdrew.
Dish DBS, a Spanish-language US TV company, will operate .latino as a closed dot-brand for its Dish Latino service, after M+M withdrew its competing application.
Japanese domain registrar Interlink won .earth, beating Google.
Motion Picture Domain Registry beat Donuts and Google to .film, meaning the gTLD will “will only be available to film producers and major film studios” under the applicant’s plan to require a Motion Picture Association of America registration number in order to register a name.
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