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Edition: U.S. Article Comments (3) Follow Reuters Facebook Twitter RSS YouTube Read Huntsman enters 2012 race against ex-boss Obama | 1:12pm EDT Over 2,400 arrested in one-week immigration crackdown 11:50am EDT McKinsey stands by employer health insurance survey 10:29am EDT Home sales hit 6-month low, supply rises | 2:22pm EDT Airline passengers fed up with service except for Southwest 12:43pm EDT Discussed 48 Weiner tells friends he will resign: NY Times 47 IMF cuts U.S. growth forecast, warns of crisis 46 Ron Paul wins 2012 Republican straw poll in New Orleans Watched Hefner's revenge; Ryan Reynolds stops traffic Fri, Jun 17 2011 Grim cigarette labels aim to curb smoking Mon, Jun 20 2011 Airbus A380 damaged at Paris Air Show Mon, Jun 20 2011 Analysis: New Internet rules will spawn battle for "dots" Tweet Share this Email Print Related News Internet body throws open domain names Mon, Jun 20 2011 CORRECTED - ".brands" approach with Internet name shake-up Mon, Jun 20 2011 ".brands" approach with Internet name shake-up Fri, Jun 17 2011 Pandora's allure fades on profitability doubts Wed, Jun 15 2011 Regulators pressure banks after Citi data breach Thu, Jun 9 2011 Analysis & Opinion ICANN haz .youridentityhere Tech wrap: Panasonic profits shaken by quake Related Topics Technology » Small Business » Media » The emblem of of United Parcel Service (UPS) is seen at the cargo center at the Cologne/Bonn airport near Cologne November 1, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Ina Fassbender By Martinne Geller NEW YORK | Tue Jun 21, 2011 3:36pm EDT 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. (Additional reporting by Jennifer Saba and Ransdell Pierson in New York and Jessica Wohl in Chicago, editing by Gerald E. McCormick) Technology Small Business Media Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (3) WebVixn wrote: What a strange monopoly the ICANN has! Who are these people and where will all this money go? And I wonder what they’ll be looking for when hiring these “hundreds of consultants” who are to adjudicate the claims for the new suffixes… Jun 21, 2011 2:50pm EDT -- Report as abuse Stupidscript wrote: “Aside from a fee of $185,000, applicants must prove claims to the domain names they wish to buy.” “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.” The facts that anyone who applies to manage a TLD (top-level domain) must first be approved as a root domain name service management company over the very long haul (can’t have DNS admins dropping out every few weeks), and then pay all of that money to their own team of maintenance and security people (to manage this new business these corporations find themselves in), in addition to the costs of requisitioning, rolling out and maintaining a DNS farm will do several things: (1) There will be no “explosion” of TLDs, because there will be very few corporations that will be able to justify this expense and long-term commitment; (2) Prevent every Tom, Dick and Harriet who wants to be a DNS manager from doing so; and (3) Limit who can take advantage of these new rules to the very upper crust of the world’s businesses. Mom and Pop need not apply. So we will see the further ghettoization of the Internet name space, soon to be dominated by giant companies at the expense of the little guy, and increasing fragmentation of the addressing system, which will further punish the little guys in favor of the big guys. Nice way to completely abdicate your responsibilities to maintain a fair and open addressing system, ICANN. Once again, it comes down to those who have the bucks getting to make the landscape over in their image. Big fail. Jun 21, 2011 3:40pm EDT -- Report as abuse web2mon wrote: A shell game. Which one is it under. The gap widens and is excluding the weak hands at all costs. Authority at every level is a sham impersonating legitimacy that is bought and paid for by the current have’s in culture. 4.6 million for a MM dress but everything is A-OK, right? Jun 21, 2011 4:54pm EDT -- Report as abuse See All Comments » Add Your Comment Social Stream (What's this?) © Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters Editorial Editions: Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom United States Reuters Contact Us Advertise With Us Help Journalism Handbook Archive Site Index Video Index Reader Feedback Mobile Newsletters RSS Podcasts Widgets Your View Analyst Research Thomson Reuters Copyright Disclaimer Privacy Professional Products Professional Products Support Financial Products About Thomson Reuters Careers Online Products Acquisitions Monthly Buyouts Venture Capital Journal International Financing Review Project Finance International PEhub.com PE Week FindLaw Super Lawyers Attorney Rating Service Reuters on Facebook Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

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