SEO Werkt!

A little bit of a song and dance today from Icann as it released the full list of businesses and other organizations that have applied for their own customized top-level domain names. The full list is here.

In a press conference in London, Icann’s CEO Rod Beckstrom noted that over 500 companies and organizations have paid up tens of thousands of dollars to apply for the TLDs. They include some interesting twists: Google has applied for “.google” but the Charleston Road Registry has applied for “.android”.

Clearly not all will leave this process happy. Icann says that it will be going through a multi-stage process now to decide who will get what. That will include checking for whether names are too similar to each other, whether they meet technical requirements, and whether the names are geographical or not, and whether they applicants meet financial, technical and operational capabilities to run a registry. More details on the process for getting a name here.

More to come as we continue to look hrough the list and wait for Icann to resume its press conference. (Rather bizarrely it has chosen to take a 15-minute pause in the middle of proceedings, perhaps to get journalists to review the lists.)