Canon Decides To Acquire .canon tld

[engine]

Canon Decides To Acquire .canon tld [cnet.com.au]

Canon's decision to acquire the top level domain .canon has the potential to be the smartest, or the strangest, marketing move from a photography company yet.

Canon has indicated that it will buy .canon, one of the first companies to do so after the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) decided to relax top level domain regulations in 2008. Canon believes something like canon.canon will be easier to remember than canon.com.

[Webwork]

Thus Alice's adventure in Wonderland began . . .

[Swanny007]

I dunno... everybody knows ".com" already... it's neat but there can't be that much added valued with that TLD.

[mcavic]

It's a bit early for April Fools.

[mack]

I think its a great move.
model.cannon as a domain.

Depending on how the domain is administered they could use anything.cannon to resolve. [.cannon...] for example.

Mack.

[walkman]

A 30 second ad will probably cost the same as this, but now the entire web is talking about it. Smart

[zett]

So, where will they point us to?

www.canon.canon
www.canon
info.canon

Doesn't make sense IMO.

[jcaron]

Isn't there a requirement in the (planned) gTLD rules that a TLD must be at least somewhat open to registrations from third parties?

[UserFriendly]

Why on earth did ICANN relax the TLD specs?

[ergophobe]

And how to I get .ergophobe?

And for people who say "we already know .com" - I think that's very shortsighted.

If TLDs are very open, then there's no real reason for .com.
In most implementations, www is not necessary as it usually resolves to the root domain.

So perhaps in 20 years, people will find www.canon.com to look ridiculously antiquated. It will feel so 20th century.

Canon has been around for 60 years and I'd hope that some people in the company are thinking 60 years ahead as well. On that time scale, I think it makes sense to grab it... though I bet they could have gotten it a lot cheaper someday later.

If they want to visit the root domain for a major company, they'll expect to just type 'canon' into their browser.

Of course, that means that Chrome will have to do a DNS lookup for anything entered into the address bar and won't be able to guess based on format whether a single-word entry is a domain or a keyword.

[jcaron]

You wait for ICANN to do final approval of the whole process (still a few more months to wait AFAIK), then you submit an application including a few hundred thousand dollars in fees, guarantees and the like.

[icann.org...]

Jacques.

[encyclo]

I think its a great move. model.cannon as a domain.

This inadvertently reminds us of Canon's perennial Canon/Cannon typo problem with their company name. Guess they'll have to shell out for two gTLDs :)

[mcavic]

Isn't there a requirement in the (planned) gTLD rules that a TLD must be at least somewhat open to registrations from third parties?

Not that I can see, but that was clearly the intent.

[httpwebwitch]

I could probably find this info elsewhere... but what are the cost and requirements for dreaming up a new TLD and spawning it?

I've got a head full of ideas... both good and bad

[jcaron]

See my previous reply 4 posts above. Note also that if several people want the same TLD (as is bound to happen for the more obbious ones), an auction process is started to decide who gets it (once they pass the initial screening phase). Those who don't win the auction only get a (very) partial refund of their application fee (too lazy to check the exact amount right now, but it's something like $165K IIRC).

Jacques.

[httpwebwitch]

ICANN isn't very forthcoming with info about this. A lot of their documents regarding "new" TLDs are over 10 years old.

A "gTLD" application costs $185,000 USD, plus a $100 USD registration fee, plus $6250 per year, plus $0.20 per domain registration, plus an enormous pile of red tape.

factsheet:
[icann.org...]

guidebook:
[icann.org...]

New gTLD's are supposed to support international characters, too. (I'm still looking for confirmation of that). There are big opportunities, if you have boatloads of money to toss in.

[JS_Harris]

I don't see any value or benefit in using a .canon (or a dot anything new besides .com) UNLESS it is wisely managed. Search engines place a premium on .edu and they would place a premium on .canon (for all cannon products) if the content found on .canon sites is Wikipedia-like.

If Canon allows everyone access to the .canon tld its value will be diminished enough to expect no special treatment.

This might be a good way to make sure you're #1 in serps for ALL of your own products. Watching with interest.

[bill]

If Canon allows everyone access to the .canon tld its value will be diminished enough to expect no special treatment.

I don't think you have to open these domains up for the public. These corporate types will reserve them for branding and internal use only.