.calvinklein? .bananarepublic? A clear money-grab that has no benefit to users, complicates validation and security for developers, and seals off vast swathes of the namespace for the sole use of corporations.
Some companies (ex http://www.nic.ovh/en/index.xml ) are using it for their customers.
Some companies (ex https://calculator.aws/ ) are using it for shorter URLs, while still being descriptive.
Sure some are just doing it because they can, other's have no good use case yet. But I fail to see how .bananarepublic being in the hands of one company is a detriment to me... the average internet user.
My argument wasn't specifically about .bananarepublic or .calvinklein. It was more that I don't believe trademarks should have been admitted, full stop. There's no way ICANN can make impartial decisions here that benefit the bulk of Internet users.
I reserve judgement on generic TLDs, although I really don't like the implications to user confusion caused by .photo, .photos, .pics and the like.
No? If this broke things for you then I've got very bad news about how broken those things already were.
Only textual exact matches of A-labels work for figuring out if names are the same. Guessing that if parts of the name seem kinda similar maybe that's enough just introduces endless weird security bugs.
And the new TLDs didn't change that, example.com isn't example.org and example.photos isn't example.pictures or example.snaps or example.selfie
If you think you need "effective TLDs" then you actually wanted the Public Suffix List, and the reason that's what you wanted begins decades ago in several ccTLDs and isn't the fault of this cash grab at all. Remember to thank Mozilla again while you're there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_I
knowing that his descendant and third successor would have an Internet TLD named after his title.
On the other hand, apparently the third Aga Khan expressly emphasized his preference for a technologically-literate successor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_IV#Ascension_to_Nizar...