Questions About Need for Another gTLD Round Linger Despite General Enthusiasm

A GNSO working group is assessing whether any changes are needed to existing policy, its webpage says. Comment on its initial report is due Sept. 26. Competition/antitrust and rights protection mechanism reviews underway are also prerequisites to launching the next round of gTLDs, Atallah said. He expects those reviews to be completed before year-end or early in 2019, with board members receiving all input by Dec. 31, 2019. Realistically, he said, a board decision on whether to launch another round will take place "not before 2020."

Asked if the 2012 round succeeded, Atallah said the program set out to increase competition, provide more choice and spur innovation. "The choice is there now, the competition is there," but the innovation isn't as obvious as ICANN would like, he said. There has been some innovation -- some cities now have their own TLDs, some brands are moving to new TLDs and Google is rolling out .app -- but nothing is overwhelming, he said. If new TLDs don't do well, that's a business issue, he said. One success story is internationalized domains displayed in local languages, at least in China, where much local content is available, Atallah said.

Verisign reports about 22 million new gTLD (ngTLD) registrations at the end of Q2, up about 1.6 million from Q1. But ngTLDs decreased by about 2.5 million registrations, or over 10 percent, from last year, a registry executive summary said. The top 10 ngTLDs -- .top, .loan, .xyz, .club, .online, .vip, .win, .shop, .ltd and .men -- had about 51 percent of all ngTLD registrations.

"There is an appetite for new TLDs from new applicants that wish to do generic names, and there is also a healthy stream of dot brand applicants like Salesforce that are seeking the next round after sitting out the 2012 round," emailed Jothan Frakes, CEO of registrar PLISK.com (Private Label Internet Service Kiosk) and executive director of the Domain Name Association. Talk of new domains is ongoing and industry is in a consolidation period, he said. Many of the 2012 generic TLDs have launched, with the premium pricing models that accompanied the launch phases now less of a focus than importance of registration renewals, he said.

Slow Process

Many dot brands are starting to launch "slowly and methodically," Frakes said. Certain new TLD owners are pulling back or even canceling applications, sometimes because it's difficult to convince stakeholders of benefits of making the needed changes, he said. ICANN did a "meh (at best)" effort to spread awareness of the namespace expansion, and it's not meant to be a marketing organization, he said. This forced commercial participants to do marketing, which watered down awareness of the availability of new naming options, he said. Nevertheless, the "new round did create more consumer choice and innovation" and the next round will, too.

Donuts holds the largest portfolio of new TLDs, and in the past 15 months has increased its size through acquisitions, among them .travel, .charity and .fan, emailed Vice President-Marketing and Communications Judith McGarry. The company has launched all of its TLDs, with two purchases made in Q2 set to roll out in Q3-Q4, she said.

It took a long time to complete rollouts, said Afilias Senior Vice President-Chief Marketing Officer Roland LaPlante. It took time to sort out TLDs with multiple applicants and ICANN's process for approving and delegating new domain spaces is "rather lengthy," he emailed. Nearly 600 dot brands were applied for in 2012, and many more brands ("like, thousands") want to take part in the next round because they are now at a competitive disadvantage, he said. Afilias "has no plans at present to itself apply for any additional generic TLDs" but is working with some dotBrand applicants and applicants for generic and city strings, he said. LaPlante doesn't "think there is much a case for more generic TLDs, unless there are niches that are unserved."

"The new TLDs were a bad idea then and still are a bad idea," emailed Taughannock Networks founder John Levine, a member of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC). The nominal reason for the round was "competition," but all new TLDs are "still maybe 5% of .COM and .NET," he said. Most new TLDs are "just sitting there with a few thousand names, which doesn't seem enough to cover their operating costs," he said: There have already been some registry bankruptcies and "I doubt that .WED will be the only TLD that will just fail." Even the brand TLDs are "notably unsuccessful," Levine said: "The list of terminated TLDs now has over 30 names."

Conflicts, Collisions

Several new gTLDs from the 2012 round remain contested, Atallah said. The conflicts will be resolved or the domains will go to auction, he said. He hopes the community considers improving the contention resolution process for the next round.

Some contest types "raised eyebrows," Afilias' LaPlante said. ICANN set stringent requirements for "community TLDs" but many participants don't understand how the organization decides whether an application is a "community" one, he said. For example, .gay was determined not to have a community.

Auctions were problematic, said LaPlante: Strings that went to private auction generally went smoothly from an administrative standpoint, but the "ICANN auctions are a different story." If contending applications couldn't agree to private auction, ICANN hosted the "auction of last resort." .web, a "nuDotCo," won against seven rivals, "but it turned out that Verisign (who did not apply for .web) had funded their bid with an agreement" that the bidder would turn the TLD over to Verisign when it won, he said. That violated rules, but ICANN didn't take corrective action, he said. Donuts is one of the applicants for .web and .gay, and has four .hotel, .spa, .cap and .music new TLDs in contention, said Donuts' McGarry. "We are working with other applicants to move the ball forward toward resolution."

Collision TLDSs such as .email and .home also pose hurdles, LaPlante said. The names weren't blocked from application, but subsequent analysis showed they will cause more confusion than they'll be worth, he said. There's a handful of people who believe they'll make big money from new TLDs, "and a whole lot of us across whom the costs of dealing with confusion and abuse are spread," said Levine. He said a SSAC name collision project is trying to better characterize the collisions "that make it unwise for stability reasons to delegate names like .CORP, .HOME and .MAIL."