Brand TLDs became a thing in 2012 under ICANNs New gTLD Program

I've only seen it used by companies that cannot get out of their own way.

Instead of news.honda.com (their actual domain) or hondanews.com (actual domain, redirect from before, all owned by them, also has news) or honda.global (makes sense, but nothing there) or honda.com/news (makes sense, but nothing there) they go waste money on a new gTLD. So we have global.honda/en/newsroom/. .

At least they're using it: https://domainmetadata.com/list-of-all-honda-domains

There was an opportunity to apply over a decade ago. The plan is to open another window for applications next year.

On one hand, it ruins DNS, but on the other hand, it makes ICANN a lot of money.

I use dns.google pretty often, very useful when implemented correctly.

Ford, Mercedes and Apple all own /8 address blocks. I thought IBM used to own one as well but they must have given it up.