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.free domains to finally arrive as Amazon reveals three gTLD launches

Kevin Murphy, January 31, 2025, Domain Registries

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.

gTLD auctions net ICANN another $13m

Kevin Murphy, October 27, 2014, Domain Registries

ICANN has raised another $12.9 million from new gTLD auctions.
A small batch of three contention sets — .realty, .salon and .spot — were resolved last Wednesday in the third so-called “last resort” auction.
.realty went to Fegistry for $5,588,888, .salon to Donuts for $5,100,575 and .spot to Amazon for $2.2 million.
ICANN now has accumulated new gTLD auction sales totaling $27.8 million.
It raised $14.3 million selling off .buy, .tech and .vip in September. The auction for .信息 fetched $600,000 in June.
ICANN’s share — after auctioneer Power Auctions is paid off — is being put into a special fund, rather that ICANN’s current account. The community will one day have to decide what to spend it on.