Only one fresh TLD “auction of last resort” to take place in June

Other auctions deferred until later months.

ICANN’s first official auction to resolve a fresh top level domain name contention set will take place on June 4…but with only one TLD.

Participants in at least six TLD contention sets eligible for the first auction have postponed them. These auctions can be postponed for two reasons:

First, by mutual agreement of both parties. Second, if any applicant in the contention set wants to wait for the finalized framework for handling name collisions.

ICANN states that two auctions have been delayed by mutual agreement and the rest by firms waiting for the name collision framework. That stated, it’s easy for one party to blame name collisions since it’s simpler than getting mutual agreement.

The auctions delayed due to name collisions have been moved back one month. It seems that one of the “mutual agreement” auctions may also be moved back just one month. The .docs contention set between Google and Microsoft has been pushed back to August, suggesting the parties have delayed the auction by mutual agreement.

A number of auctions planned for later rounds have also been delayed. This must be due to continued negotiations between the parties.

The one auction still on the docket for June is 信息(xn‐‐vuq861b). Afilias, the registry that manages .info, states this translates to “info”. Competing applicant X states ʺ信息ʺ means “knowledge or message in the form suitable for communications, storage, or processing, which is closely related to notions of form, meaning, pattern, perception, representation, and entropy.”