Original Source: Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/21/us-brands-web-idUSTRE75K54U20110621

Re-post sources:

India Reuters http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/06/22/idINIndia-57841820110622
UK Reuters http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/21/uk-brands-web-idUKTRE75K56720110621
Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110621/wr_nm/us_brands_web_1
CNBC http://www.cnbc.com/id/43482575
MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43482573
Stuff.co.nz http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/5178716/Net-rules-will-spawn-battle-for-dots
Arabian Business http://www.arabianbusiness.com/new-internet-rules-will-spawn-battle-for-dots--406562.html
OnIslam http://www.onislam.net/english/health-and-science/news/452751-new-internet-rules-will-spawn-battle-for-qdotsq.html
Montreal Gazette http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Internet+rules+will+spawn+battle+dots+Analysis/4987314/story.html

Analysis: New Internet rules will spawn battle for "dots"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When it comes to branding on the Internet, 2012 may be the dawn of a chaotic new era with companies and other groups expected to battle over suffixes like .cancer, .chocolate and just about .anything.

The decision on Monday by the body that governs Internet domain names to stop restricting them to suffixes like .com and .gov will change the way companies interact with consumers and how much they'll be paying to do so.

"It's going to make the Wild West look positively civilized," said James Gregory, chief executive of CoreBrand, a corporate brand consultancy.

Currently, there are 22 "generic top-level domains," such as .info and .org, plus about 250 country-level domains such as .uk, .de or .ca. That framework has already created an environment in which companies own thousands of possible domain names, even if they don't use them, just to prevent bad faith "cybersquatting."

New names -- which could end in anything from .pepsi to .food to .healthy -- are expected to start getting approved by the end of 2012. That means hundreds more top level domains are expected to come into existence, creating the possibility for a complex network of possible URLs such as coke.zero or italian.food.

Companies already spend hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars a year to maintain registries for domain names not in use, partly to prevent others from snapping them up for ill intentions such as domain name trafficking, financial fraud or selling counterfeit goods.

Now that the number of possible domains is growing exponentially, so too might the number of registrations in companies' portfolios, according to industry experts.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will start accepting applications for domain names in January. Aside from a fee of $185,000, applicants must prove claims to the domain names they wish to buy. ICANN will outsource the job of adjudicating claims to hundreds of consultants.

Those hurdles may deter bad-faith registrations, said Josh Bourne, managing partner of FairWinds Partners LLC, which advises companies on domain name purchases. But they will not prevent battles between companies that both have legitimate claims.

"If you're talking about Unilever and Mars -- who's going to jump on .dove first?" he said. Unilever Group makes Dove skin cleansers and Mars Inc makes Dove chocolates.

CAN'T AFFORD NOT TO BUY

The application period is limited and closed, Bourne said, meaning that companies are likely to be secretive about their plans so as not to tip off the competition. In addition, since the next application period may not be for several years, he said risk-averse brands cannot afford not to participate.

"The only safe bet is to be an early adopter, even if you don't plan to use it," Bourne said. He noted that getting in early is more important for some brands than others, since there is a provision that prevents names that are too similar.

For example, if delivery company United Parcel Services Inc applied for .ups in round one, and then five years from now, financial services company UBS AG, which had not initially applied for .ubs, decided to apply because all of its rivals have, "the answer is 'sorry, because there's a .ups and that's too close,' " Bourne said.

Many large companies contacted by Reuters, including Nestle Ltd, Kraft Foods Inc, Procter & Gamble Co, Kimberly-Clark Corp and Pfizer Inc, said they were following the developments but declined to discuss specific plans.

Aside from the application fee, Bourne said owners have to pay about $25,000 a year to maintain each registry and $50,000 to $75,000 a year for technical functions often outsourced to a registry operator. Over the course of a 10-year period, he said that could amount to as much as $2 million per domain name.

For the largest consumer products companies, which have dozens of brands, that could run to many millions of dollars.

"But the next question is, what do they actually do with it?" Bourne said. "What can you do with .coke that you can't do with coke.com?"

COMMUNITY OF LOVERS

Jeff Ernst, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said new domain names pave the way for new opportunities for marketers, who always want to control as much of the Internet as they can.

"For brand presence, why be subservient to dotcom?" Ernst said. "Starbucks (Corp) might want to create a community of coffee lovers at .coffee," Ernst said. "It's going to enable a lot more customer intimacy for companies."

Another idea is to use new domains to reward customer loyalty, Bourne said, such as by letting a brand's most loyal customers have the chance to have their own email addresses or websites under the brand's umbrella.

At present, there are about 100 million .com names registered, accounting for about half of the world's registry, according to Ben Crawford, chief executive of Internet registry service provider CentralNic. But the fact that the new rules allow for domain names in other alphabets, such as Chinese characters or Cyrillic, has huge implications, he said.

"The next billion new adopters of the Internet are probably people who don't use our alphabet," Crawford said. "The Internet is getting more global."

IMPACT ON SEARCH

Even though there are a lot of marketing opportunities, companies are unlikely to transfer their current Web content to new sites, Bourne said, because that would mean losing their page ranking in Internet searches through engines like Google Inc.

"You're moving from something that has tons of equity in Google's eyes to something that has zero equity, never been heard of before," Bourne said. He said they're also unlikely to change all employees' email addresses to reflect the new domain names.

Forrester's Ernst said he thinks search engines are going to have to adjust their algorithms to give a .brand a high ranking for a search on a particular brand.

"The search engines make their money on advertising. They get eyeballs to the most relevant search results," he said.

get the .brand buzz...


Etisalat secures top-level domain - TradeArabia.com
TradeArabia

CentralNic Powers First New Top-Level Domains Announced by ICANN - CircleId.com
CirlceID

Expert view: Gavin Brown - dotnxt.com
dotNxt

New domain names to break grip of tech giants
The IndependentIOL Scitech

The End of the Dot-Com Era? - cnbc.com
CNBC

Dot-anything Web domain costs big .$$$ - cnn.com
CNN

ICANN's Domain Expansion: Why .Metallica Makes Sense - blog.forbes.com
Forbes

Your .brand gTLD: hopeful registry partners go into marketing overdrive - worldtrademarkreview.com
World Trademark Review

How companies are coping with gTLD applications - managingip.com
Managing Intellectual Property

DotBrand Solutions launches in the Middle East
AME Info ITP.net
Zawya Alrroya
The National Trade Arabia
NewzGlobe
Gulf News
The Next Web
Al Watan The Peninsula

DotBrand Solutions in Germany
Business-on.de IT-Business.de IT Espresso DE Domain Recht

How ICANN's Approval of New Domains Will Change the Web - mashable.com
Mashable

Analysis: New Internet rules will spawn battle for "dots" - reuters.com
Reuters
Yahoo! News OnIslam CNBC MSNBC Arabian Business

Forget .com, here's .coke - money.cnn.com
CNN Money

Experts clash on benefits of owning and managing .brand domains - v3.co.uk
V3

Site Name Broker Preparing for Suffix Explosion
LA Business Journal

Hundreds of dot-brand domains predicted - theregister.com
TheRegister

New '.music' web domain worries recording industry - politico.com
Politico

Marketers debate usefulness of ICANN's new domain names - btobonline.com
BtoB Online

Drinks firms could profit from internet expansion - just-drinks.com
Just-Drinks

ICANN Approves Custom Generic Top Level Domains - eweek.com
eWeek

ICANN approves top level domain name changes - upi.com
UPI

ICANN Approves Generic Top Level Domains - enterprisenetworkingplanet.com
Enterprisenetworkingplanet.com

Here come the domains - bizmology.com
Bizmology.com

Goodbye .Com, Hello .Anything - portfolio.com
Portfolio.com

ICANN Vanity Domains: A Caution for Midmarket Firms - internetevolution.com
InternetEvolution

Top-Level Domains Will Help Web Growth & Reach - yousaytoo.com
YouSayToo

.Branding: It's the End of the .com World as We Know It - brandchannel.com
BrandChannel

Dot-Brand: Get those applications ready - mediapost.com
Marketing Daily

Money Radio 1510 Interviews Ben Crawford - New gTLDs: A New Era for Brands on the Internet
Money Radio

Are You Ready for .anything? Generic Internet Domains on the Way - pcmag.com
PCMAG.COM

Ben Crawford: Why Trademark Owners Are Acquiring Their .Brand TLDs "Defensively" - blog.ud.com
UD.COM

A New Era for Internet Domains: Why .XXX Is Just the Beginning - mashable.com
Mashable

Squawk On The Street: Has The Internet Out Grown .Com? - thedomains.com
theDomains

The Big Bang in Domain Names Is Coming - The CMO Site
the CMO site

Here Come the .Brand Top Level Domain Names - Domain Name Wire
Domain Name Wire

Introducing dot Brand Solutions - Launching Brands into a New Digital Landscape

Please direct PR enquiries to our London Headquarters on +44 20 33 88 0600 or via email at info@dotbrandsolutions.com


next: DotBrand Solutions' events