Lots of companies applied for "Brand TLDs", which are not the same as running a full registrar and not nearly as expensive but did require that you show you have the trademark for the name.
> For the avoidance of doubt, ICANN's Preliminary Determination shall not prohibit ICANN from delegating the gTLD pursuant to a future application process for the delegation of top-level-domains, subject to any processes and objection procedures instituted by ICANN in connection with such application process intended to protect the rights of third parties.
So not really a graveyard. They can be registered again under the normal conditions that apply.
With Google's mission to remove the URL from the browser and these TLD's often being considered fishy (in terms of spam detection etc). I can understand there is little value for companies to obtain/keep these other than prevent squatting.
> With Google's mission to remove the URL from the browser...
What evidence is there for this? I searched and I couldn't find anything.
Is this[1] what you are referring to? Because that, in my opinion, is just a minor UI change -- not a fundamental shift in the browser experience, as you seem to imply.
When was the last time a google link took you to the url that was displayed below it?
They don't treat links honestly at all anymore (including javascript clickjacking, not just tracking links). Direct navigation is not in their best interests at all anymore. Yes, they want to kill the URL.
And something that became clear during the application process was that squatting is not going to be an issue for gTLDs. There's ample time for a rightsholder to object to a problematic registration.
Corporates mostly, who have with (little) time realised that it makes no commercial sense to keep such an extension secured. We are yet to see graveyard for some (most) of those novelty consumer-facing gTLDs. Give it another couple of years.
I'm surprised at how many techco's let go of their own gtld - from a security standpoint wouldn't it make sense for them to maintain their own SSL & Domains, especially for deployed hardware - URL must match regex of domain & SSL = list of valid certs?
There's no technical benefit to operating your own TLD for internal use. You get all the same benefits under a normal domain name, without the operating costs of a TLD.
