Amazon has signed a contract with ICANN to manage .AMAZON and another two gTLDs, which are the names translated into Chinese and Japanese. This means the end of the seven-year-long battle. Amazon filed applications to run these domains back in 2013, stating its intention to use them as brands. However, the ACTO countries (Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization: Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Colombia, Peru, Suriname and Ecuador) were against this, and GAC ICANN unanimously rejected the applications.
However, the US online trade managed to invoke Independent Review Process to challenge the decision and won in 2017. In particular, the review showed no ACTO country had a city or village named Amazon, which meant the company’s formal right to register its name as the brand domain. However, the position of GAC ICANN remained the same until recently. Later, the US representatives revoked their vote, so GAC lost the consensus and its recommendation lost its effect. Domain Incite notes that the position of the US on GAC ICANN was voiced by a representative of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). And recently before the US revoked its voice, Amazon had hired David Redl, the most-recent former head of the NTIA, as a consultant. It remains for the readers to decide whether or not it was a coincidence. Still, there was no more formal reason to refuse Amazon. ICANN tried to launch talks between ACTO and Amazon, but they were deadlocked before really getting off to a start because of the contradictions between the ACTO members and their domestic problems which were more important, such as the political and economic crisis in Venezuela.
This means that ICANN ran out of reasons to reject Amazon’s application. According to the contract, the company must provide each ACTO country with one domain name to run their own websites. In addition, ACTO has the right to block 1,500 names that may have a special cultural value for the region. The number is lower than the ACTO countries hoped for: they wanted to have the joint right to run the entire domain zone. But it seems like now they have to deal with this: the probability of ICANN cancelling the signed contract is almost nonexistent.
