What Does That July 29th Deadline Mean For .brand TLD Applicants?

Akram Atallah, ICANN Global Domains Division President
(source: ICANNphotos - License CC BY-SA 2.0)

Why is this man smiling?

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google's handling of new top level domains: "Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com? A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs."

"The idea that a brand needs its own TLD must be the biggest con ever perpetrated by domain consultants." -- Ken Schafer

What does that July 29th deadline mean for .brand TLD applicants? In short, it means the deadline to execute a Registry Agreement with ICANN for almost two hundred "brand" names, with more money than good sense, having already wasted a lot of money applying for their very own spanking new "brand" gTLD that probably will "fail to work as expected on the internet," or "break stuff," and has no, nada, SEO advantage when it comes to Google search. Where can one go to get a refund? Well, you can probably forget about getting any refund from that "domain name consultant" or registry services rep a/k/a "trusted advisor" a/k/a snake oil salesman who talked your lamebrained CTO or CIO or other staff member(s) into "applying" for that mostly useless, worthless top-level domain, that hardly any major "brand" company uses as its principal domain name, even today. It was all just another "predatory shakedown scheme" hatched by the Global Domains Division of ICANN together with those ICANN "stakeholders" who stood to profit from your stupidity and gullibility. Note that Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and CEO of Facebook (along with many others in Silicon Valley) refused to be "suckered"--there is no dot FACEBOOK--and Mark is probably laughing at all of you reluctant .brand TLD applicants facing the July 29th deadline to sign a Registry Agreement with ICANN, which will obligate your company to pay thousands and thousands of dollars per year indefinitely into the future, instead of just doing what Zuckerberg and most "brand" registrants do, which is pay about $10 per year for the best top-level domain (TLD) god ever created--the global "gold standard in domain names"--a dot COM domain name.

But heck, you've got plenty of money to throw away, go ahead, sign the Registry Agreement, and tell Akram that Domain Mondo says hello!


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