New gTLD auctions that used to take place almost every week quite recently are already almost forgotten. The more interesting it is to find that on January 25th an auction will determine the fate of .KID and .KIDS domains. Google corporation applied for .KID, while Amazon and DotKids Foundation applied for the .KIDS. Domains were considered to be too similar (since they are a singular and a plural form of the same word kid), this is why only one of them, which wins the auction, will be added to the root zone. This will be the first auction for the last 1.5 years. The last auction took place in July 2016 when the companies were fighting over the right to manage .WEB.
Applicants couldn’t agree between themselves, this is why this will be an ICANN auction. This means that the winning bid will go to the corporation’s budget and the lost parties won’t get any compensation (which happens often during private applicant auctions). Observers point out that DotKids Foundation is highly unlikely to be able to match the tech giants; this is why most probably the winner will be either Google or Amazon. In addition, Domain Incite draws attention to the fact that up until now “children” domains haven’t been particularly popular. For example, in the US domain zone .kids.us there were only 100 webpages created in 10 years. Domain Incite also refers to the Russian experience stating that there have been less than 1200 names registered in the .ДЕТИ, which has existed for 3.5 years.
