International Airlines withdrew its .swiss application — Why Swiss

Faced with government approval, airline gives up fight for .swiss.

While it ought to come as no surprise, here’s an official response to Reglike’s inquiry to why Swiss International Airlines withdrew its top level domain application .swiss:

Following further discussions with the Swiss Government, we decided to withdraw our application and will support their community application. We will work closely with them in the future.

The airline was in a contention set with the Swiss Confederation government for .swiss, and the government submitted an early warning on the application. The government wrote:

…An exclusive right of use granted to a private firm would be against the public interest of the Swiss community since members of that community would be excluded from using that domain space. The exclusive right of use by Swiss International Air Lines Ltd would also be contrary to ICANN objectives to increase competition, innovation and growth in the internet addressing system…

The airline basically had no chance of winning.

That stated, I think having the Swiss government run .swiss will be a win for the airline following all.

Swiss International Airlines uses the Swiss.com domain name. If it got .swiss it would use it to promote flights. Instead, the government will use it to promote Switzerland.

That means we might see second level domain such as alps.swiss and travel.swiss.

And what happens when people forget the dot? Yep, they’re likely to visit Swiss.com.

I also hope Swiss International Airlines tried to negotiate a bit, such as on having a couple second level travel domains reserved exclusively for its use.