According to Ad Age, big brands may start to compete for vanity domain extensions. For instance, Pepsi and Coca-Cola might vie for .soda or .pop; Procter & Gamble and Unilever could vie for .laundry or .soap; and McDonald’s and Wendy’s could bid on .burger or .fries.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit agency that oversees the distribution and policy of domain names, would conduct an auction, and the domain rights would go to the highest bidder. And that could get pricey quickly for brand owners. One outside consultant estimated that the total cost to business could reach $1.5 billion.
Today there are currently 21 generic top-level domains–.com, .net and .org currently account for 91% of all top-level-domain registrations; .com alone accounts for 74%.
