Aruba applies for 39 top level domain strings: Exclusive

Aruba plans to expand beyond .cloud.

Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The firm told Reglike that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year’s fresh TLD round. That number includes replacement strings.

Aruba surprised many when it topped Amazon, Google, and others in a private auction for .cloud in the 2012 TLD expansion round. .Cloud now has over 500,000 registrations.

While not as well known as its biggest competitors, Aruba is a dominant player for web presence in Italy and offers services elsewhere in Europe, too.

In this round, Aruba is moving beyond its IT-focused domain.

“We are building a portfolio that speaks to different audiences and markets,” Francesco Simondi, Head of Registry Services, told Reglike. “Everything from vertical-specific domains to everyday language variants, giving registrars and end-users real choice.”

The firm applied for the following strings as primary or replacement:

aid, all, ask, beta, bit, bnb, cart, ciao, daily, demo, easy, fix, gaming, gen, genius, gym, happy, hello, hola, human, kit, lab, mars, max, moon, omg, pec, pop, rem, roma, sign, sito, super, tag, tex, vps, yes, zen, zzz

Many of its proposed strings conflict with those disclosed by other applicants. So, following winning the .cloud auction years ago, the firm has many more auctions in its future.