Archive for February, 2009

ICANN is soliciting Expressions of Interest from firms interested in and capable of performing any number of independent evaluation roles as part of the new gTLD process. These entities, to be retained by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), will provide independent evaluation services, evaluating applications for new top-level domains (gTLDs).

The search engines are already influenced by the TLDs currently in the space, and feel that this will continue to be the case, as long as the TLD is topic-specific, or region specific.

In terms of new TLDs being launched in the coming years influencing the search engines, this really depends on a number of factors.

A second draft of an Applicant Guidebook that details the process of applying for new generic top level domains was released today along with a detailed analysis of comments received so far.