The second ICANN Global Domain Division Industry Summit has come to a close in Amsterdam. The event was devoted to the development of the domain market, information security, the work of technical centers, and prospects for a new wave of applications for New gTLD program.
The summit focused on promoting domain names in the new zones appearing under the New gTLD program. Representatives of the new registries noted that users do not always notice the new endings that are different from standard country domains. This problem was called Universal Awareness.
“People just don’t understand that the word that is written after the dot is an integral part of an Internet address. It’s very difficult to promote new domain names in such circumstances. The first thing we need to do is to allow users to get used to the fact that almost any word in any language can now be used as a domain,” Jeffrey Saas, representative of the .CLUB domain registry, said. According to him, this problem could be resolved by having brands, which have registered their TLDs, actively use them for their services. For example, if the world’s most popular search engine began using search.google, its huge audience would get used to the new domain zones more quickly.
Much attention was paid to the choice of a technical operator to support TLDs. The participants discussed the issue of whether a separate certification procedure should be introduced for technical centers in order to make them "recommended" for applicants who will submit their applications at the second stage of the program. The participants also urged the simplification of the process of transitioning from one technical center to another to make the market more flexible and competitive.
The ICANN GDD Industry Summit in Amsterdam is the second global industry event. It was organized by ICANN together with the registries of national and new domains and technical operators to discuss domain market issues (compared to other events held by ICANN, where the most attention is paid to the development of various policies), and is more practical in nature. The next meeting is scheduled for autumn 2016 in Los Angeles.
