Amazon went into sunrise with three gTLDs this week, and I thought it might be interesting to pore over the latest zone files to see which companies are the most motivated to protect their brands nowadays.
First, because sometimes the results are just weird. Second, because countless new gTLD consultants are trawling the business world for prospects right now, and sunrise participation data might be useful as lead generation.
Amazon launched .you, .talk and .fast on Tuesday, so these results are for the first two days of sunrise, a period that lasts for a month. As such, there are only a few dozen registered domains in each TLD, at most.
Let’s start with the weird: dog food companies seem to fear cybersquatting more than you might imagine. Mars brands Orijen, Champion Pet Foods and Acana are all protected (though no more of Mars’ dozens of consumer brands), as is independent retailer PetSmart.
An AI company have a presence on the list, which is a relatively new phenomenon for sunrise periods. Anthropic has registered both “anthropic” and “claude”, for its chatbot, in all three TLDs.
Financial companies have a strong presence on the lists, with Freddie Mac, Bank of America, Intesa Sanpaolo, Merrill and Astorg all registering names. Energy brands Iberdrola and Avangrid are registered.
Conscious Capital, a Swiss investment company that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, has defended its brand. That’s notable because the company uses a .us domain for its web site and the .com is listed for sale by a domainer for $2 million.
1-800-Flowers.com, which has somehow managed to get a Trademark Clearinghouse listing for “flowers” — the product it sells — participated in the sunrises as usual. The gTLD .flowers belongs to XYZ.com.
Hotel chain Hilton, podcasters Wondery, construction company VINCI Concessions (vinci-concessions.you???) and tech firms Broadcom and AT&T have all also got in quick to grab their matching domains.
The sunrise periods run until September 25, with general availability following hot on their heels.
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