Bad.monster? Two more gTLDs have been acquired
Two more new gTLDs have changed hands, DI has learned.
XYZ.com has picked up former dot-brand .monster from recruitment web site Monster.com, while newbie registry Intercap Holdings has acquired .dealer from Dealer.com.
Both ICANN contracts were reassigned last month.
Neither acquiring company has announced their purchases or published their launch plans yet.
That said, XYZ has already registered a few intriguing domains: bad.monster, good.monster, my.monster and go.monster.
It appears that go.monster — slogan: “It’s Alive!” — will be the registry’s launch site. It’s the only one I could get to resolve.
It’s the second example I can think of of a dot-brand gTLD being acquired by a registry that intends to run it as a generic.
In 2016, Top Level Spectrum acquired .observer from the newspaper of the same name.
Most dot-brands that don’t want their TLDs any more choose to retire them. That number is up to 45 now.
.dealer wasn’t technically a dot-brand — it had no Spec 13 in its contract — but its 2012 application certainly made it look like a dot-brand, with most of the domains reserved for Dealer.com and its affiliates. It looked defensive.
Shayam Rostam, chief registry officer of ICH, told me the plan for .dealer is to primarily target car dealers (also its former owner’s market) but that it will be unrestricted and open to all comers.
Intercap wants to get its January launch of .inc out of the way before turning its attention to .dealer, so we’re probably looking at mid-late 2019 for a launch, Rostam said.
It also needs to do some housekeeping such as moving the TLD to Uniregistry’s back-end.
What do y’all think about these TLDs? Could .monster be the next .guru? Could .dealer find a home in the burgeoning legal cannabis market? Comment below!
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