According to reports, Amazon has recently won a seven-year battle to capture the last word in e-commerce.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit organization that helps manage IP addresses and the internet’s domain name system, ruled that Amazon can proceed in its effort to secure the .amazon domain. That would allow the e-commerce company to develop “generic top-level domains” (gTLDs) like fashion.amazon or books.amazon.
Other brands have also secured such domains quite easily, but for Amazon, it was tremendously hard. Its 2012 application has been challenged by South American countries including Peru and Brazil stating that, according to ICANN meeting notes, “the name Amazon, in any language, is part of the cultural heritage and identity of the Amazon countries, and that its use as a first level domain name, unless otherwise agreed by the Amazon countries, shall be reserved for the promotion of the interests and rights of the Amazon peoples and their inclusion in the information society.”
According to ICANN, plenty of time was allowed for the negotiations between those countries and the company, which have now been exhausted, so ‘there is no public policy reason for why the .amazon applications should not be allowed to proceed in the New gTLD Program.”
Amazon spokesperson said, “We welcome and appreciate ICANN’s decision to continue processing Amazon’s applications for the .amazon Top-Level Domain.”
After winning the domain, it’s not yet clear that how useful or influential the domains might be. Some experts say that Amazon can get a clear advantage, especially against Google, while others think that the opportunity may have passed.
