LOS ANGELES (BRAIN) — The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved a host of new extension names, including .bike, as a new Top Level Domain with an open registry.
Scott Kamler, president of Kent International, has registered Kentbicycles.bike along with Kentbicycles.com. Other bike companies have done the same, so users can now navigate to Specialized.bike, Trekbikes.bike, or Cannondale.bike, for example.
In the early days of the Internet, some bike companies did not get the .com address they originally wanted, due to URL address squatters who wanted exorbitant fees to sell the domain name. So the new extension has suppliers investing in locking up .bike addresses before someone else does.
“I’m wondering if this is just a fad that will go away or has anyone actually embraced it yet,” Kamler said. Yet he made the investment to make sure he did not lose Kent’s .bike address to a squatter.
“I think the cooler application would be for email addresses — to send me an email at scott@kent.bike — that would be the most interesting application,” he added.
The .bike extension is controlled by the domain name registry company Donuts, which paid $185,000 to ICANN for the extension, along with many other new extensions. Donuts offers to block trademarked names across the domain names it owns for a $3,000 fee payable every five years.
