ICANN have decided that Google’s request for the dotless top level domain (TLD) “search” has been rejected. In fact their report stated no one should get dotless TLDs anytime soon because there are just too many issues with them. Surprisingly such a request from Google wasn’t the first for a dotless TLD and it no doubt will not be the last despite ICANN’s ruling.
The domain, like the dotless suggests, means the domain is missing a dot. This gives Google a rather large swath of the search bar because instead of having to type http://google.com or http://google.search (if Google were given such a TLD) you would only have to type http://search to be on a Google website.
While Google has been refused dotless TLDs it is still pushing hard to secure other high profile TLDs like .search. Google has applied for an absolute tonne of these new TLDs and they will continue to be hotly contested and controversially debated in the coming years. Google of course isn’t the only internet-based corporation to get involved with the “TLD rush”, Amazon are known to be heavily involved at the current time too.
Image courtesy of ICANN
