Jun 14 2012

Breakdown of Proposed Generic Top Level Domains

ICANN, the organization that regulates domain names, has allowed organizations and individuals to apply for new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD). A Top Level Domain (TLD) is the a domain extension such as .com or .org used by millions of websites. In addition to .com and .org there are country specific TLDs such as .co.uk, .fr, and .mx. ICANN has nearly 2,000 applications for new gTLDs. ICANN has released to the public gTLD application information such as the newly proposed domain extension and the applying company. For example, Google has applied for nearly 100 domain extensions including for .app, .youtube, .goog, .plus, and many more. Google clearly can afford the $185,000/application fee.

I downloaded the data, played around with it and generated some graphs to help me visualize the new land rush for domains. Please note that I discounted and removed a few gTLD applications for non-latin domains.

The first chart shows that nearly 50% of the new domain extension originated from North America. North American and Europe combine make up over 80% while African organization only applied for roughly 1% of proposed new domain extensions.

The following chart shows that a large number of the new proposed generic domain extension are under five characters long but there are a few that are up to eighteen characters in length.

The following graph shows the most popular proposed domain extensions. For example, thirteen different individuals or organizations applied for the .app TLD, eleven for .inc and .home, ten for .art, etc. This chart shows only domains with five or more applications.

As previously noted, Google applied for nearly 100 domain extensions… 98 to be exact under Charleston Road Registry Inc. Top Level Domain Holding Limited registered 68 gTLDs followed by Amazon with 65. Apple doesn’t appear in this chart because this graph shows application organizations with more than ten domain extension applications.

I also wanted to graph the number of applications per primary contact and found out that a single individual, Daniel Schindler, has filed for three hundred domain extensions. Looking at the data, each of the applications submitted by Mr. Schindler are for distinct legal entities.

So who is the real domain squatter? ICANN will be squatting on nearly $400 million because of the $185k/application fee. Another question is, how will a flood of new gTLDs affect the value of current domains? And perhaps most importantly, how will the private organizations use and restrict access to these domain extensions?