The GDPR hasn’t even been the law of the land in Europe for a full week and it is already causing confusion and chaos in parts of the digital economy.
Here are the headlines you need to know about as the impact of the GDPR starts being felt.
When ICANN paved the way for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), a group of banks and financial service trade associations formed fTLD Registry Services to run a new .bank gTLD.
The new .bank domain debuted last year and was billed as “a trusted, verified, more secure and easily identifiable location on the Internet for the global banking community and the customers it serves.”
Proposals being considered by ICANN would limit the use of WHOIS privacy protection services that domain name owners frequently use to keep their domain registrations under the radar.
Can’t find a good .com domain for your company?
Thanks to new top-level domains, there is more opportunity than ever to find a catchy, highly-brandable domain name that’s still available for registration.
But is using a new top-level domain instead of a .com domain a good idea?
The range of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) is expanding to include new options such as .Hotel, .RealEstate and .Berlin.
Will they help you rank higher in searches?
The imminent roll out of more than a thousand new top-level domains has created a headache for small businesses seeking to protect their existing domains, as well as sparking a bidding war among the world’s tech giants for the most attractive TLDs.
The process is being handled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and will ultimately see the number of TLDs increase from 23 to 1,500 over the next few years.
Examples of new top-level domains include .london, .plumbing, .sexy and trademarks such as .google and .bbc.
A few of the new domains have already gone live, others are awaiting final authorisation, while some are still the subject of disputes over which applicant should be granted ownership.
If the disputes cannot be settled amicably then it will ultimately go to a bidding process where the TLD will be handed over to whoever stumps up the most cash. That’s likely to be an expensive purchase, especially considering the fact that the initial application process cost £185,000.
So what’s the point of the new domain names, other than to boost the coiffeurs of ICANN? Well according to the head of ICANN’s generic domains division Akram Atallah, it’s all about consumer choice.
With new gTLDs due to start appearing on the web, it’s time again for brand owners to stop and think about their domain strategy.
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the body responsible for managing and coordinating the Internet’s Domain Name System, last week made a surprise announcement that the first new gTLD could go live in the internet as early as August 28 2013 and we may see the first registrations from September 28.
The new generic top-level domain program will enable the introduction of new gTLDs into the domain name space.