The .symantec Dot Brand

Symantec Corporation provides information security and protection services to customers around the world. Other services include offerings such as storage and systems management, and the company maintains a strong focus on eliminating risk at all levels. Symantec has more than 18,500 employees.

Symantec's primary focus is to eliminate any risks to data and processes etc on any platform. The company helps to protect and manage access to the information and technologies of individuals and organizations.

The intended future mission and purpose of the .SYMANTEC gTLD is to serve as a trusted, hierarchical, secure, and intuitive namespace provided by Symantec for its consumers.

Symantec anticipates that brand domains such as the .symantec extension will become a separate class of domain names. In that context, the company's new TLD will provide a new platform to expand its marketing and promotion efforts and consolidate many of its intellectual property activities.

The .symantec string will provide a new and secure channel for the company's online offerings and help to protect and enhance its corporate identity. Protection of the Symantec brand will be a paramount concern. Registration of names will be limited to the company and qualified subsidiaries & affiliates.

As a branded gTLD, the primary driving factors of the .SYMANTEC gTLD are differentiation and innovation.

A four stage rollout is planned.

1. Testing phase to ensure secure and seamless access and interoperability. Transition planning for possible full operation.

2. Allocation of domains for widespread internal corporate use. Evaluation of strategies to "potentially migrate traffic away from its current patchwork network of second-level domain names..."

3. Possible permanent migration of Internet traffic to the .symantec TLD. Registration rights may also be granted to licensees and strategic partners.

4. Monitor the impact of the dot brand TLDs and changes in the domain name industry — this is expected to take around five years to assess. Further expansion, such as the possibility of extending registration rights to customers, will depend on this assessment.

Potential use of the string will also depend on the company's future strategies as covered in annual reports and investor filings. The Applicant believes that the number of domain registrations will be fewer than 10,000 in the first five years.

Symantec also says that during the initial launch and evaluation phase it will redirect the new domains to existing .com names.

There will be many potential benefits for the company and the public. For example, the program will:

...Provide Symantec and its qualified subsidiaries and affiliates with short and memorable Internet addresses; provide increased navigation to products, services, advertising campaigns, public interest content, public awareness initiatives, etc...

Symantec's application notes that while the company is committed to going ahead with its brand TLD — at time of filing there had not been sufficient time or market data to "evaluate all potential use case options". The company intends to analyse public response to the dot brands and the activities of other applicants before choosing best-in-class ways to serve its own online strategy. It will also monitor the response of search engines.

The goal of the TLD is for it to become a "trusted source of information and an online marketplace" for users, consumers, investors, the media and third parties. Symantec hopes it will eventually attain the level of trust currently enjoyed by the .edu and .gov TLDs.

The company describes the .symantec string as having a "verifiable online source-identifying function". Consumers will come to understand that websites are fully owned and controlled by Symantec and hence are authentic.

Internet users navigate via a variety of online channels and many businesses are increasing their use of cloud, virtualization and mobile technologies.

...Symantec believes that a .SYMANTEC gTLD has the potential to provide an innovative, virtual avenue to Symantec goods and services that will deepen and broaden its relationship with consumers.

The company will invest in an appropriate level of outreach and communications to promote its new brand domains.

Symantec has developed a draft framework to govern the usage of its brand TLD and prevent misleading or abusive use of any of its domains. For example, laws and statutes governing Internet use in all active jurisdictions will be respected. Active policies will also guard against virus distribution, piracy, cybersquatting, phishing, pharming, defamation, spam, malware distribution, IP infringement, false information and so on.

Privacy and confidentiality will be protected and the general operation of the .symantec TLD will be "consistent with its Statement of Privacy Principles".

The risk of counterfeit or infringing products and services will be reduced by the provision of a secure platform.

Symantec's back-end registry provider Verisign has vast experience in Internet security — knowledge which will also be applied to the .symantec string.

Verisign has developed proprietary code to help identify malware in the zones it manages, which in turn helps registrars by identifying malicious code hidden in their domain names.

Registration of .symantec domain names will be restricted to the company and its qualified subsidiaries & affiliates. This factor alone will provide a rubust security foundation. Further, the need for defensive registrations will be reduced.

Symantec Corporation's primary safeguard against mitigating abusive and/or non-compliant registrations within the .SYMANTEC name space is the limited universe of registrants that will be permitted to register with the .SYMANTEC gTLD... This built-in validation mechanism promotes uniform compliance...

Symantec states that it is "committed to providing best in class safeguards". The company will also carefully monitor the security inititatives of other brand domain holders.

Geographic Dot Brands

Because of the sensitivity and importance of country & territory names to governments in the domain name system, Symantec will reserve them from registration in the first instance.

These internationally recognized geographical names are contained in the ISO 3166-1 list, a technical reference manual from a UN Group of Experts and a standardized names list from a UN Working Group.

The Applicant notes that aside from its .com domains, it also provides offers and content in a variety of country code TLDs such as .ca, .de, .eu and .ru. These geographical identifiers help to "provide consumers with a hierarchical and intuitive namespace to navigate for relevant content" and add functionality.

Symantec already operates various geographical domains like Norton360.pl and Hamburg-Trustcenter.de. These serve to illustrate the logical methodology used to register names in the traditional namespace. These existing domains demonstrate fair and non-misleading use of geographical terms. Symantec wishes to extend this intuitive framework into its new brand TLD.

...Symantec believes that a .SYMANTEC gTLD can provide a verifiable online source-identifying function for its current and future customers around the world, instead of the current mix-and-match approach...

Symantec notes that as a responsible international company, it wishes to minimize any potential misleading business practices. Hence it is committed to working with governments and authorities on the geographical names issue and will participate in future ICANN policy discussions.

The company looks forward to working with the GAC (and the other brand domains) to obtain the release of country terms.

Possible .symantec Brand Domains

Security.symantec
Cloud.symantec
Protection.symantec
Licensing.symantec
Norton.symantec
AntiVirus.symantec
Geotrust.symantec
Firewall.symantec
Info.symantec
Search.symantec
News.symantec
Updates.symantec
Shop.symantec
Trialware.symantec
Home.symantec

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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