Amazon was a major player in ICANN’s last top-level domain (TLD) expansion round, serving as a Registry Operator for over 50 TLDs based on over 70 strings for which they originally applied. During the recent Brand Registry Group (BRG) meeting at ICANN82 in Seatle, Amazon detailed its preparations for ICANN’s next round of TLD expansion scheduled for next year. While Amazon’s presentation was primarily focused on its .brand registries (e.g. .AMAZON and .AWS), the key insights they shared are invaluable for any current or future TLD Registry Operator.

Why this Matters

Operating a successful TLD is not easy. Operating a successful .brand TLD is even harder. The BRG has detailed some of the internal challenges that its members have had in educating the value proposition of a .brand TLD across the multiple business, legal and technical teams in large multi-national organizations. Amazon gave a clear road-map for other .brand Registry Operators or prospective applicants to follow.

Below are some of the key exceptions from the BRG session. A full transcript and Zoom recording are available from the ICANN website. A big shout out to Matthew Crossman (Amazon Senior Corporate Counsel) and Christina Bedor (Amazon Corporate Counsel) and Crews Gore (Domains, Brand Protection and .FOX Registry) for their informative and interactive session at ICANN82.

• Cost Savings – You know, we are always sort of cost-conscious, and it is increasingly expensive to acquire great domain names in .com and other TLDs. And so .amazon for us, and our other .branåds, there’s a cost-savings angle that I think our businesses get really excited about, that they can have the name that they want without having to put forward significant capital on an acquisition.
• Security – Our security folks are doing some deep thinking and being really strategic about how do we separate out services using our .brands so that you have that layer of insulation, which I think is a really interesting use case. And then the last thing I’ll say sort of from the security side that, again, I don’t think gets talked about enough is the value of .brands as internal infrastructure. When we go and talk to our security people about what we have available with our .brands, the thing that they get most excited about is building infrastructure using the .brands.
• Trust – [F]rom a big-picture perspective, there’s just a sort of trust and authenticity angle here. What we’re really trying to do slowly over time is help our customers understand that for certain things, if you see it on .amazon or one of our other brand TLDs, that communicates a level of trust and authenticity. And so you can trust that the message that is coming from this .brand is authentically from that .brand.

For those organizations interested in learning more about applying for and/or operating a .brand TLD, consider stopping by the BRG booth at the International Trademark Association (INTA) annual meeting in San Diego this May. You will have the opportunity to speak with BRG members and leadership.

Deeper Dive

• Brand Registry Group website: https://www.brandregistrygroup.org
• Brand Registry Group ICANN82 session: https://icann82.sched.com/event/1vpcl/gnso-rysg-brg-membership-working-session
• Amazon’s current TLDs: https://ntldstats.com/registry/group/Amazon-Registry-Services-Inc