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Walmart, Safeway Fighting For Control Of .Grocery

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June 13th, 2012

Whether any of this domain spending will ever justify itself is impossible to say, but it doesn’t look likely. Existing .com Web addresses are already what customers expect. A shorter domain might make sense for mobile commerce, where the extra four characters after .macys are a pain—but then how much sense does .bloomingdales make if you’re trying to save customers a few characters?

What is certain is that these new domains will go live a year after they’re officially awarded, or the retailers who paid for them will lose them. A National Retail Federation estimate last year put the cost of maintaining the new domains—including setting up a registry—at $50,000 to $100,000 per year, not including the costs of any legal challenges.

Some chains did take a more creative approach than just repurposing their old .com domain names. Safeway, for example, is trying to register .justforu, named for the cross-brand loyalty program it has rolled out in its chains. And Sears bid for .shopyourway—but not .sears or .kmart. Other chains may also have applied for non-brand top-level domains, but done so through outside agencies, which means it’s not clear who applied for what.

That brings us to two of the biggest retail-connected domain buyers: Amazon and Google. Amazon applied for 77 new TLDs. Google (using the name “Charleston Road Registry”) applied for 101. Along with competing applications for .buy, .shop and .store, the two will also be arguing their cases to ICANN for control of .app, .book, .cloud, .drive, .free, .game, .mail, .map, .movie, .music, .play, .show, .spot, .talk, .wow and .you. There’s also .kids (from Amazon) versus .kid (from Google), which will probably end up in a fight because they’re so similar. Amazon’s and Google’s lawyers are going to be seeing a lot of each other this year.

Here, for the record, are the applied-for TLDs that cover major retail-chain brand names:

  • amazon
  • apple
  • asda (Walmart)
  • athleta
  • bananarepublic
  • bestbuy
  • bloomingdales
  • coach
  • gap
  • george (Walmart)
  • gucci
  • hgtv
  • homedepot
  • homegoods
  • homesense
  • jcp
  • macys
  • marshalls
  • mcd (McDonald’s)
  • mcdonalds
  • oldnavy
  • piperlime
  • polo
  • qvc
  • safeway
  • samsclub
  • staples
  • target
  • thd (Home Depot)
  • tiffany
  • tjmaxx
  • tjx
  • tkmaxx
  • vons
  • walmart
  • winners
  • zappos

Amazon is bidding for the following names: .amazon, .app, .audible, .author, .aws, .book, .bot, .box, .buy, .call, .circle, .cloud, .coupon, .deal, .dev, .drive, .fast, .fire, .free, .game, .got, .group, .hot, .imdb, .jot, .joy, .kids, .kindle, .like, .mail, .map, .mobile, .moi, .movie, .music, .news, .now, .pay, .pin, .play, .prime, .read, .room, .safe, .save, .search, .secure, .shop, .show, .silk, .smile, .song, .spot, .store, .talk, .tunes, .tushu, .video, .wanggou, .wow, .yamaxun, .you, .yun, .zappos and .zero.

Google is applying for these names: .ads, .and, .android, .app, .are, .baby, .blog, .boo, .book, .buy, .cal, .car, .channel, .chrome, .cloud, .corp, .cpa, .dad, .day, .dclk, .dds, .dev, .diy, .docs, .dog, .dot, .drive, .earth, .eat, .esq, .est, .family, .film, .fly, .foo, .free, .fun, .fyi, .game, .gbiz, .gle, .gmail, .gmbh, .goo, .goog, .google, .guge, .hangout, .here, .home, .how, .inc, .ing, .kid, .live, .llc, .llp, .lol, .love, .mail, .map, .mba, .med, .meme, .mom, .moto, .mov, .movie, .music, .new, .nexus, .page, .pet, .phd, .play, .plus, .prod, .prof, .rsvp, .search, .shop, .show, .site, .soy, .spot, .srl, .store, .talk, .team, .tech, .tour, .tube, .vip, .web, .wow, .you, .youtube and .zip.

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Posted in E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Mobile/Wireless/Contactless
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