The registration in the new gTLD .CHANNEL is going to be opened on March 29. Google applied for it 10 years ago, and the domain was delegated to the company in September 2014. Initially, Google intended to use the domain as a de facto closed one: it was assumed that only YouTube channels owners could register their domain names in this zone, in order to use such websites to promote and popularize their YouTube content.
But over the past years, Google has radically revised the concept of the domain zone. Now the domain is considered as commercial only. The new rules suggest that domains in it can serve exclusively for online stores and help channel owners to monetize their content. Moreover, the mention of YouTube generally fell out of the new rules, and we are obviously talking about any channels in principle. In this regard, The Domain Incite resource suggests that the .CHANNEL domain can become a potential competitor to such domain zones as .SHOP, .STORE and .SHOPPING.
The period when registration of names in the domain will be possible only at the invitation of the Google Corporation itself will last from March 29 to May 2. It can be assumed that the company will try to attract the authors of the most prominent commercial channels in order to further use their decision to register domain names for advertising and marketing purposes. From April 5 to May 9, there will be a priority registration period, when domain name registration will be available to right holders. At the same time, limited registration for everyone will begin on May 2. But registering a domain will not be so easy: to do this, the applicant will have to apply and register on an online platform specially created by Google. A decision will be made on the registration of a domain name based on the results of consideration of the application. This limited registration period will last for a whole year. What will follow it is still unknown: no mention of public registration in Google documents could be found.
