Dot-brand top level domains will be different in the next fresh TLD round

Applicants in the next round will come armed with plans to use them (I hope).

I got an alert today of another dot-brand top level domain name owner pulling the plug on its domain name.

Dabur, a firm that sells Ayurveda (traditional medicine in India) products, decided to cancel its .dabur domain name. Oddly, the firm previously sent a notice of termination in 2021 but withdrew it. It doesn’t look like the firm used .dabur beyond setting up the obligatory nic.dabur domain.

The same goes for many of the 150 dot-brands that have by now been canceled. Firms spent the money to get their brand-matching top level domains but never used them.

To be sure, some firms are using their dot-brand names. Fox comes to mind. Here’s a cool tool to verify if content actually originated on Fox, using verify.tool. And wayfinder.fox helps you find your way around the Fox studios.

But I think most people, even those who promoted dot-brand domains in the 2012 fresh TLD round, will admit that usage has been underwhelming.

A big reason for this is that many of the 2012 applications were defensive. Even though there were many safeguards to prevent people from cybersquatting on TLDs, brand owners were convinced that they ought to pay to prevent it from happening.

I’ve heard from many people that, despite weak dot-brand use cases out there, we ought to expect many brands to apply in the next round. I’ll take them at their word while also understanding that this round will be different.

Presumably, firms that apply in the next round will have a use case for how they plan to use the domain. It won’t be merely for defensive purposes. If this is the case, we will see more dot-brand sites on the web in a few years.