Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhaney | Hacker News Reader

ICANN charges a $185,000 evaluation fee to register a new gTLD, and they are under no obligation to approve it. They also expect you to actually run some infrastructure for your new gTLD, which has ongoing cost, and they will not approve your application if you don't have a plan for that infrastructure. There's also an ongoing fee of $6,250 per quarter per gTLD.

View on HN

That initial fee is quite the racket. Quarterly's not as bad, but looking at some recent TLDs that have gone inactive you can tell those companies are desperate to save the cash:

Paramount let .cbs and .showtime expire in October, and Gap let .bananarepublic and .oldnavy expire this month.

Some of them are desperate, perhaps.

I'd guess more of them see that after ten years, Twitter still doesn't make a link when they post something like 'great content on whatever.cbs'. They have $6250 but run out of patience.

The cost of a legal defence to just have someone read some paperwork and say yay or ney.

s/charges/charged/. The last time you could apply for a gTLD was in 2012.

> The next application submission period for new gTLDs is expected to open in Q2 2026.

> […]

> While the application fee has not been determined, it will be set on a cost-recovery basis. The fee will ensure that the next round of the New gTLD Program is fully funded and does not require funds from ICANN's operating budget. As a point of reference, the application fee for the 2012 round of the New gTLD Program was US$185,000.

https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/announcements-and-media/announ...

In case of multiple applicants, there is an auction that can happen as well. In reality, various applicants settled among themselves so there weren't many.

1/3rd of the amount raised from the fee (60k USD or so) was earmarked for a legal fees. Some of the money is being spent on a ICANN Grant Program: https://www.icann.org/grant-program-en

Thanks. Then it is about squatting by heavy hitters.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com