Zeebiz Bureau
New Delhi: Internet giant Google has paid USD 18.7 million to buy domains – .google, .youtube, .goog and .plus, media reports claimed on Thursday.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had in January this year invited applications from companies, organisations and individuals who can come up with USD 185,000 (over Rs 1 crore) to buy specific words that will replace the present top level domain names in practice like .Com, .Net, .Org, .In and the other usual suffixes on their website addresses.
Companies applying for the generic top level domain (gTLD)are required to provide bank guarantees of USD 2,50,000 (Rs 1.38 crore).
So far, more than 200 terms are being sought by more than one bidder. ICANN will decide who gets ownership of the contested top-level domains.
Amazon has opted for .tunes, .got, .author, .smile, .song, .joy, .bot, .like and .call. Apple applied for .apple.
Leading Indian corporate houses like Reliance Industries, Airtel and State Bank of India have also applied for use of word of their choice to replace .Com, .Net and the other usual suffixes on their website addresses.
According to ICANN, Bharti Airtel has applied for .Airtel and its sister concern Bharti Enterprises has applied for .Bharti.
This means that the group can have or allow any firm to have website name ending with .Airtel or .Bharti.
Similary, RIL has applied for .Indians and .RIL gTLD. SBI and Infosys each have also applied for two such names.
Financial service firm HDFC and it sister concern HDFC Bank, conglomerate Tata Sons and its subsidiary Tata Motors are also among applicants.
Broadcasting firm Star India, pharmaceutical company Dabur and Lupin, financial services company Shriram Capital, Automobile firm TVS have applied for one gTLD.
IT firms Nameshop, Infibeam Incorporation and DotPing have also applied for gTLD.
People having objections to these names applied have been given approximately seven months to file a formal objection to any of the applications received.
With Agency Inputs
