It seems that Amazon is finally starting to actively show itself not only as an online retail giant, but also as a registry for new gTLDs. During the first stage of the new domains program, the company collected an impressive portfolio of 54 domains, but the vast majority of them have not yet been launched. Perhaps now the situation will begin to change. As Domain Incite reports, citing ICANN documents, the Early Access Period for copyright holders in two new generic top-level domains, .DEAL and .NOW, will open on August 22. Both domains were included in the DNS root zone back in 2016, but their launch has only just begun.
It is still difficult to judge the prospects of the new domain zones. There is already a similar “deal” domain on the Internet, which is the plural form of the same word - .DEALS. It is managed by Identity Digital, and at the moment there are less than 10,000 registrations in the domain zone.
However, the not very high figure may be related to the rather noticeable registration price - about $25. .NOW perhaps looks more preferable. One can recall the fate of the national domain of Niue (a self-governing state entity in the Pacific Ocean) .NU. The word nu also means “now” in several Scandinavian languages, in particular, in Swedish, the domain is quite popular: about 220,000 names are registered in it.
The Early Access Period for the .DEAL and .NOW domains will last a month. It will be followed by a week-long early access period, when domain names can be purchased at premium prices. And from September 30, both domain zones will open public registration for everyone.
