The .gecompany
Dot Brand
General
Electric Company (GE) is one of the world's largest companies with 300,000
employees and operating in over 100 countries. GE is a diversified infrastructure,
finance and media company comprised of hundreds of businesses. Diverse
activities include aircraft engines, power generation, environmental
technologies, medical imaging and financial services.
General
Electric owns thousands of brands. "The value of the GE brands
is incalculable, but in sum total would certainly be worth billions
of dollars."
The preservation
and protection of the GE brands is of paramount importance to General
Electric in all aspects of its operations, including and especially
on the Internet...
...In
addition to the main defensive reasons for applying for .GECOMPANY,
General Electric will examine the marketplace to see whether the .GECOMPANY
gTLD can provide a single-source in the online world for all things
related to GE for all of GE's customers around the world.
GE's initial
primary goal for the .gecompany TLD is for it to be a "defensive
measure to protect the General Electric brands". The company also
envisions great potential to increase the strength of those brands and
coalesce its current domain name holdings. It views the GENERAL ELECTRIC
brand as critical to its long-term strategic business interests.
The .gecompany
string, which GE describes as a "closed-platform branded system,"
will be a targeted destination able to provide a consistent and reliable
stream of accurate information about General Electric. This will include
not just information about products and services, but info for investors,
job seekers and GE employees themselves. And, it will help GE "provide
the best possible customer service".
The business
strategy for the .GECOMPANY gTLD is centered on the unification of
intellectual property rights, promotion, marketing and customer relations
across General Electric and all of its brands...
...In
theory, the .GECOMPANY gTLD will function as one giant house in which
to explore all of GE's brands, products and services, and consumers
will be able to trust that they are getting the best and most recent
information from the official General Electric entity...
The company
recognizes the importance for all stakeholders to be able to easily
find important GE information in the new evolving internet environment.
The TLD will help facilitate and streamline navigation. It will provide
a trusted and intuitive destination and be a focus of future online
marketing efforts.
Although
the primary use of the .GECOMPANY gTLD will be to protect GE's brands,
GEGTLD and General Electric will use the new gTLDs so as to allow
GE's customers and partners to have a recognized top level domain,
housing the most up-to-date and complete information about General
Electric as a company as well as about GE's goods and services. .GECOMPANY...
may eventually be a cornerstone of GEGTLD's and General Electric's
future online strategic initiative, by providing a trusted and intuitive
namespace...
GE will
commence a careful phased rollout over an extended period. A methodical
examination of the marketplace will be undertaken with a special interest
in evaluating the rollout of other brand domains. Traffic to .gecompany
domains may be re-directed to existing traditional domains and vice-versa
during the period.
General
Electric will then register a limited number of second-level domain
names to test the system internally, figure out the best ways to market
the second-level domain names to the public, and start slowly transitioning
from General Electric's domain names in the .COM and other spaces.
"General
Electric web content is available through hundreds of domain names in
the .COM TLD, but also through various other TLDs and ccTLDs."
This portfolio of thousands of domain names makes it difficult for the
company to control and associate its brands cohesively.
General
Electric spends many millions of dollars each year in marketing the
GE brands and a higher percentage of these marketing dollars are in
the online space each year... General Electric will use large portions
of its marketing budget to speed up the process of customer recognition
and adoption of .GECOMPANY. General Electric will do whatever is necessary
to make sure that the public feels as if the .GECOMPANY gTLD is the
place to go for consistent information...
Once the
.gecompany extension is launched, the Applicant will carefully evaluate
whether its brand domain can become a cornerstone of GE's "future
online strategic initiative". The ultimate aim will be for customers
to universally understand that .gecompany domain names will be the best
and most authentic place to visit for all info about General Electric.
This
will enable GE to maximize its service to the consumer and send consistent
messages across its online marketing platform. In addition, the consistent
message and safe haven that is supplied by .GECOMPANY may increase
the reputation of GE and of the quality and authenticity of its goods
and services in the marketplace.
The .gecompany
TLD will reduce possible consumer confusion and provide a secure, authoritative
source of information free from the worries of pirates, fraud, scams,
counterfeiters, phishing, malware, typosquatters and other online wrongdoers.
The Applicant will also deploy a variety of safeguards to protect personal
and confidential information on its websites.
The Applicant
believes that once its content has been transferred to the new .gecompany
space, visitors will find trustworthy and accurate information without
"many of the other negative aspects of the general Internet space
currently in existence".
 Geographic
Dot Brands
General
Electric will initially reserve the use at all levels within the .gecompany
TLD of geographic names as required by ICANN and applicable law.
The Applicant
will reserve those country and territory names which have geographic
significance. General Electric has reviewed relevant background material
such as The GAC Principles Regarding New gTLDs and the ICANN Board Resolution
regarding country name regulation in the .info TLD and so on.
As defined
by Specification 5, paragraph 5 (of the New TLD Registry Agreement),
such geographic domains may be released to the extent that the Registry
Operator reaches agreement with the applicable government(s). The
Registry operator will work with respective GAC representatives of
the country’s relevant Ministry of Department to obtain the release
of the names to the Registry Operator.
Provided
that the use of geographic identifiers is shown to be beneficial to
online visitors and consumers, General Electric, as a responsible global
business, is interested in using them in a fair and non-misleading way.
As ICANN
has largely premised this new gTLD round on promoting innovation,
GEGTLD and General Electric will look into determining if this type
of use of second level domain names within a TLD could provide increased
consumer functionality.
NOTE: GEGTLD
= GE GTLD Holdings LLC.
Possible .gecompany
Brand Domains
AircraftEngines.gecompany
FinancialServices.gecompany
Energy.gecompany
Environment.gecompany
Jobs.gecompany
Healthcare.gecompany
London.gecompany
Boston.gecompany
Search.gecompany
Notes
Brand
names mentioned on this site are registered trademarks or trademarks
of their respective corporations. This site claims no association
with or endorsement by any of these corporations and their marks are
mentioned only to illustrate opinion presented in the public interest.
All quotations
on this page are from the respective companies' official ICANN brand
TLD applications unless otherwise stated.
Many possible
theoretical dot brands are mentioned (in English). There are also countless
possibilities in other languages. This has significant potential value
for international navigation.
This site
is focused on reporting the strategic impact of the brand domains on
internet communication, competition and commerce, and some comment is
speculative.
It is not
a comprehensive overview of what some of the world's largest corporations
have chosen to reveal about their plans for the implementation of their
proprietary domain strings.
ICANN is
particularly concerned with the technical, financial, security and legal
issues associated with the new TLDs. These issues are beyond the scope
of this website.
For a comprehensive
overview of the brand domains and their impact on the web, refer to
ICANN's website and the individual applications (large parts of which
are publicly published).
If you
have a particular interest in an individual company, the public aspects
of their applications are available for download via these ICANN links:
You can also search a complete list of applicants there.
ICANN
new gTLD applications
ICANN
official website
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