Amazon started using its dot-brand .AMAZON. As reported earlier, attempts to delegate this domain caused a long fierce conflict between the company and the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela, known as the Amazon Pact). The latter’s representatives aggressively renounced the US company’s right to own the domain. However, there were no formal reasons for a ban. Apparently, none of these countries has a city or town, an administrative territory or even a geographical site named Amazon. Moreover, disagreements between the involved states prevented them from formulating their common stance, which sidetracked the talks and exhausted ICANN’s patience.
Domain Incite reports that six active dot-brands appeared in .AMAZON: ads.amazon, alexa.amazon, echo.amazon, kindle.amazon, prime.amazon and primevideo.amazon. It is still too early to evaluate the full impact of these domain names; so far, the domains simply redirect users to the respective pages of the company’s main .COM website. But even this could be described as progress, especially considering that Amazon already owns over 40 gTLDs, including such promising ones as .BOOK. Indicatively, under the terms of the agreement that was eventually concluded between Amazon and the Amazon Pact countries, each of the countries is allowed to register a certain number of its own domains in .AMAZON but none of them have yet used the opportunity.
