This week Apple used their corporate .apple new domain extension in
promotion of their new iPhone models. This got a lot of attention in both the
technology and
domain communities. I think the real excitement should focus on the fact that they used a
domain name phrase, and not simply on the use of a branded new extension. I will expand on that idea in a future post.
It is sometimes overlooked that the biggest technology companies, not surprisingly, have been using new domain extensions in a variety of ways for some time. In this post I look at new domain extension use by Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix. I think there are some lessons for both marketing professionals and domain investors in these examples.
Apple
Apple of course has its own
branded .apple new extension. While
Experience.Apple is only the second meaningful use of the branded extension yet, clearly it has great potential for all manner of catchy domain name phrases. There are endless two or three word phrases such as create.with.apple to simply.apple that are possible.
But Apple has also for some time used many other new domain extensions. A number of these were for simple redirection, for example Apple.site, Apple.website and Apple.xyz all redirect to the main site. A few other new extensions are used by Apple in a more targeted way such as
Apple.news (that not surprisingly goes to their corporate news site) and
Apple.technology that takes you to their developer resources.
Amazon
Amazon use a huge number of different new extensions, and I just touch on a few of them in this section. It is actually a lot of fun trying different ngTLDs with the word Amazon! A number of new extensions including .fit, .forsale, .guide, .life, .online, .rocks, .site, .space, .world, .xyz and many more just direct you to the main Amazon website. Amazon also use redirects to their main website for extensions such as .date, .fund, .loan, .loans and .science where the fit is arguably more contrived. They are missing some obvious ones, since .fun, .life and .icu don't resolve so supposedly are not at time of writing controlled by Amazon.
However, Amazon also makes more specific, and interesting, use of some of the other new extensions.
Amazon.dog takes you to a page with everything from dog treats to dog beds to books about dogs.
Amazon.Christmas, as you guessed, highlights Christmas crafts and decorations. They naturally use the .boats extension for all your boating needs. Amazon do make use of the .lgbt extension, but not in an apparent way to highlight resources for the LGBT community.
Amazon.today takes you to today's deals. You might wonder what Amazon.horse takes you to - try it! Wonder where they would take you at the .wtf extension? Try it to find out!
Unlike Apple, Google and Netflix, Amazon does not yet have their own branded .amazon ngTLD, although they have been battling for years to secure it. They are currently trying to placate objections from those associated with the Amazon region of the world. You can
read about some of the twists and turns in that here.
Google
It is well known that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, use the new extension domain name
abc.xyz for their corporate website.
Google also own the rights to a number of different extensions, and of course had the very successful
.app extension release earlier this year. The other active extensions in general availability that they operate are much less well known, extensions such as .soy. They have also for some time operated
an internationalized character domain extension that in the Japanese language means 'everyone'. Several of the extensions they have that will soon come into general availability such as .dev and .page are likely to have a significant impact on the domain world. You can keep track of the extensions they operate at
https://www.registry.google/.
Unlike Amazon, or even Apple, Google seem not to have put in use many ngTLDs for redirection purposes.
Google do have their own brand as an extension .google. As noted earlier, they use that for information on the extensions they offer. They also make use of it for a
corporate blog, as a launch site for
finding and registering domain names, and for their
artificial intelligence site.
Facebook
I like what Facebook does using the .design ngTLD. At
Facebook.design you find a set of articles and videos by members of the Facebook design team. They have also have a set of resources for technology designers who are writing code to interact with Facebook. They even have a link for those who want to apply for a position in design at Facebook.
Amazon also uses a .design extension, in a similar mode, but it is a pretty sparse site compared to the Facebook one.
Netflix
As far as I could tell, Netflix make limited use of new domain extensions. However they
do use the .film extension, although it simply redirects to their main Netflix site for your country. They could have very effectively used different extensions to point to collated resources in different topics, as Amazon does. Of course
Netflix have their own branded ngTLD, although so far the use is limited.
Discussion
I don't see any of these companies ever abandoning their .com (and multiple country redirects) and going to only a new domain extension. I do expect they, and other companies, will increasingly use the new domain extensions in catchy domain name phrase marketing. I hope that more will adopt creative use of multiple extensions along the Amazon line, or do something effective in highlighting a branch of their operation as Facebook do with the .design extension.
Sometimes casual domain observers look only at the main site, and assume that the business is not using new domain extensions. As this has demonstrated, most large companies own and use hundreds or thousands of domains. The use of new extensions in certain niches of their operation is very common among the biggest technology companies. Com may well be king, but the royal court has a lot of minor players making things varied and interesting!
Please add to comments interesting new extension use by the technology giants that I left out!
Links:
Original post Sept 22, 2018.
Slight revision Oct 3, 2018 to give information re Netflix brand ngTLD, and the dispute with respect to .amazon.
Disclosure: I currently hold a number of ngTLD domain names. I am not associated (except as a customer) with any of the technology companies named in this report. The icons of those companies are registered trademarks by them.
Fine Print
This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make.
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