The .omega Dot Brand

The Swatch Group Ltd ("Swatch Group") employs more than 28,000 people in over 50 countries. The company makes watches, jewelry, watch movements & components and electronic systems. The luxury watch brand Omega SA ("Omega") is a subsidiary of Swatch Group.

Swatch Group intends to use its proposed .omega extension to expand its online marketing and promotional activities — and to protect and enhance its online presence, corporate identity and the famous "Omega" brand. It will deliver retail content and information about the company's business and focus. It will provide an opportunity for innovation and differentiation in the domain name system. Other potential opportunities will be assessed in the light of the company's current and future strategic business plans.

The .swatch TLD will provide the company with short and memorable addresses that will assist navigation to online content.

...Swatch Group believes that a .OMEGA gTLD has the potential to provide an innovative, virtual avenue to Omega products that will deepen and broaden its relationship with consumers.

Swatch leverages existing and emerging internet technologies to help interested users, customers and investors to quickly find relevant Omega-branded content. Information and store locations are provided in multiple languages for the benefit of the millions of visitors to Swatch Group's online retail stores.

Today the OmegaWatches.com website serves as a source of news, customer service information, brand information, and a digital catalog of the brand's entire line of products.

Swatch intends to use a hierarchical and intuitive framework of geographical identifiers within the .omega string. This would represent a logical progression from the current naming framework as used at www.omegawatches.com/stores.

Swatch anticipates that while the brand domains are not currently recognized by ICANN as a specialty TLD subset, they will ultimately be seen as a domain class in their own right. The .omega TLD will only be available to Swatch and its subsidiaries & affiliates (at least in the first few years of operation).

Implementation will rollout in four flexible stages:

1. A preparatory stage where IT and security personnel will test a limited number of domains for security, interoperability and so on.

2. Widespread internal corporate use of .omega names. Evaluation of strategies to extend registration to strategic partners and migrate online traffic away from the "current patchwork network of second-level domain names, which are registered in a variety of TLDs, to the .OMEGA gTLD".

3. Implement the permanent migration of traffic away from existing TLDs towards the .omega string. Possibly extend registration rights to eligible parties. At this stage, Swatch anticipates that the number of domain registrations will be less than 10,000 (after five years or so).

4. Assessment of Swatch's business plan, expansion strategy, technical analysis, changes to the domain name industry and other strategic factors. Swatch believes it will take at least five years to properly evaluate the impact of the dot brands and future plans, such as further extending registration rights (for example to customers) will depend on this.

Swatch will use various communications and outreach initiatives such as advertising and email campaigns as part of its "phased-in approach".

Omega maintains language-specific web pages for its global consumers and "does not expressly delineate its online content by country". These pages are contained in the master OmegaWatches.com site "using a hierarchical and structured naming convention that incorporates a linguistic pointer." For example, Spanish content is available by appending "/es" to the current master site's domain name.

...Swatch Group believes that the .OMEGA gTLD can provide an online single-source identifying function for its current and future customers around the world, instead of the present mix-and-match approach... ...to deliver online content to consumers in each of the world's major regions.

Swatch holds domain names containing the "Omega" mark in most country code domain extensions such as OmegaWatches.fr, Omega.cn, OmegaWatches.es, Omega.us and Omega.hk which redirect to pages on the master OmegaWatches.com website.

...the proposed operation of this registry will likely lead to direct and quantifiable benefits to consumers by providing a unified framework for the access to and distribution of Swatch Group's goods and services, instead of the current patchwork of domain names registered across various gTLDs and ccTLDs.

NOTE: cc = country code

Swatch Group intends to build a new trusted name space for the .omega string. It will become a secure channel where it will be able to consolidate its intellectual property activities. Secure purchasing facilities will be offered and counterfeiting will be eliminated. Swatch will seek the highest standards to achieve these aims. Consumers will come to understand that the exclusive nature of the registry means it can be fully trusted.

Swatch's back-end registry services provider Verisign will provide the security foundation for the .omega registry. Verisign conforms with various standards such as the WebTrust/SysTrust for Certification Authorities (CA). Confidential and personal data will be protected. The .omega TLD will also be protected from any malicious activities such as piracy, fraud, phishing, pharming, virus distribution, spam, defamation, malware distribution and so on.

Swatch Group does not foresee the need for any enhanced security mechanisms beyond those currently provided by Verisign based upon the following factors; existing Swatch Group IT security protocols; the restrictive nature of the .OMEGA registrant universe... ...security features imposed at the registrar level; and, the limited number of registrars (likely a single registrar)...

Swatch anticipates that its existing IT staff will be able to provide any necessary security support — with the added option of hiring expert consultants in the event of some unforeseen eventuality.

Geographic Dot Brands

Swatch Group is aware that the issue of protecting country & territory identifiers in the domain name system is sensitive to national governments.

Hence, Swatch will initially reserve from reservation in the .omega TLD the geographic identifiers described in the lists in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook. These terms are contained in the ISO 3166-1 list as well as lists developed by a UN Group of Experts and a UN Working Group.

Swatch products are available to consumers around the world. Online content is appropriately provided in a variety of languages.

Today, the OmegaWatches.com website serves as both a source of news and information about Omega products for potential customers around the world. Content is available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean.

Being able to deploy geographic identifiers in the .omega domain space would benefit both the Applicant and the general public. Given its existing geographical approach to sales in more than 50 countries, Swatch intends to explore the "option of providing a hierarchical and intuitive framework for the .OMEGA namespace".

The opportunity for simple and direct navigation by users is expected to increase consumer functionality and would exemplify ICANN's goal of promoting innovation. Swatch intends to use geographical terms in a "fair and non-misleading manner". It looks forward to collaborating with other dot brand applicants and the GAC to work towards the responsible release of country names in the domain space.

Possible .omega Brand Domains

Watch.omega
Swatch.omega
Jewelry.omega
Quality.omega
Seamaster.omega
Constellation.omega
Diver.omega
Ladymatic.omega
Store.omega
Gifts.omega
CustomerService.omega
Investors.omega
Museum.omega
News.omega

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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