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How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?
52 aerodog 78 8/29/2025, 7:15:55 PM data.iana.org ↗
Blame ICANN for allowing any public or private organization who can meet the requirements to buy and operate a gTLD back in 2012: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs...
And as per another comment in this thread, they’re doing another round of this in 2026: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45068328
1. A set number of slots should be opened every 10 years (e.g. 250 new gTLDs every ten years).
2. Entities submit bids for the gTLD slots, in terms of dollars. The 250 highest bids win.
3. If your entity wins a slot, you submit the gTLD you want, and there's a public comment period where claims against the gTLD being created are heard (e.g. if you own the copyright in some jurisdiction and someone else is trying to register it, submit a claim).
4. If it passes, your entity is allowed to register a set number of TLDs on the gTLD (e.g. 100) before anyone else gets access. This is what you bought: The fact that the gTLD exists, and the first 100 domain names on it without competition).
5. It then becomes a real gTLD.
Some variant of this is how it always should have worked, and entities like Google should be forced into a sophie's choice: They could fight .google indefinitely, win, and it'll never become a gTLD, or they could sponsor it, claim the first N domain names, but otherwise make it available to everyone. Of course, they might actually have valid jurisdictional claims against anyone else who tries to register a .google domain on copyright grounds, so maybe they fight and win in the courts against anyone who tries to use it; but the point is that it shouldn't be ICANN's decision.
Is the highest bidder really the best custodian of a tld?
Why have a quota of, as you say, 250 every 10 years? What does this do to help, what issues does it address?
Those are not particularly compelling examples in favor of such a thing.
The issue would occur in the suggested system when ICANN decides to one day stop creating 250 domain names down to 25 domain names or some such change that increases the value of the gtlds to ridiculous numbers only the wealthy/well-connected can afford.
Now prioratizing unambiguos naming would be somewhat acceptable if ICANN was tacobell and just a steward of naming on the side.
If you are not a consumer on an ISP emulating dialup it is quite likely that a popular name in a naming convention I.e. 'mercury' resolves to something for you and something for someone at a different firm (mercury.intranet.[firm].not-so-stupid-tld). A cert is possibly not a fully qualified one so when ICANN gives away mercury you need to append .asshat to everything ICANN names.
(Two firms have an unambiguous situation because they don't trust each others private roots but they both trust a cert issued for the public trust as a fqdn which is why TLDs expanding is a form of theft/breakage against every intranet..)
As for certs, AFAIK, you can't get a certificate for a non-fqdn from a public CA since 2015.
The DNS naming confusion was largely dealt with by having a small number of TLDs and rarely referring to complex things like partially specified subdomains, but every once in a while a fool named their machine com, org, or net. (Though these as subdomains were far more toxic.)
https://wiki.opennic.org/opennic/dot
They may or may not have then had the evaluation fee refunded to them, under the Applicant Support Program (https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/application-rounds/round...).
(https://ismaili.imamat/#introduction)
The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Imamat.
They have as good a claim to a TLD as Berlin, if not more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uk
(Or did I miss an "/s"?)
So, a quite expensive domain hack? Are they trending again? There's even a list on domainhacks.club
My startup is called MedAngle, and we'd love to get medan.gle, but it just left a sour taste in my mouth. Some of these processes are giant black boxes.
https://icannwiki.org/.george
do companies even use these in the wild or are they buying these TLDs for nothing? ".brother", ".canon", ".nokia", ".panasonic", ".playstation", ".xbox", ".xerox"... there's even ".sandvikcoromant", which is some sort of Swedish metalwork company.
Canon does use .canon for a few things, at least.
Where have you seen .aws in use though?
[1] e.g. https://quantumai.google/
https://icannwiki.org/.agakhan
https://icannwiki.org/.ismaili
https://icannwiki.org/.imamat
In the late 90s, when NSF allowed Network Solutions to charge for domain names, people complained that they (now Verisign) had a monopoly, so after a number of fine lunches and dinners in far off exotic places (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAHC), there was a proposal to create more top-level domains, created the registry/registrar split, proposed the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (primarily for Intellectual Property owners), etc. Then, the US government stepped in and started a process that led to the creation of ICANN.
The whole point of this exercise was to introduce competition into the domain name system. It did with the registry/registrar split and tried with the registries by having multiple rounds of a limited number of new top-level domains. However, the latter was kind of stupid (IMHO): the switching costs for changing TLDs is way too high for the existence of new TLDs to significantly impact Verisign's monopoly -- instead, it created a bunch of monopolies.
However, people weren't happy with the "limited number" part of ICANN's efforts to introduce competition in the TLD space, so in 2012, the ICANN community (which anyone can be a part of) opened the flood gates, removed the arbitrary restrictions on how new top-level domains could be created, and we now have over 1500 TLDs.
I believe the only actual requirement is that it has to be 3 characters or longer, as two characters are reserved for countries.
One of those criteria is that you actually do something with the gTLD — per their FAQ:
> ICANN expects all new gTLDs to be operational. One of the reasons ICANN is opening the top-level space is to allow for competition and innovation in the marketplace. The application process requires applicants to provide a detailed plan for the launch and operation of the proposed gTLD. gTLDs are expected to be delegated within one year of signing a registry agreement with ICANN.
A few highlights from the full evaluation criteria (https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/evaluation-qu...):
- They will reject applications made by known cybersquatters
- They will reject your TLD string if it has rendering problems on major OSes (e.g. if its codepoints aren't covered by at least fallback fonts)
- They will reject your registration policies if they're incoherent or unenforceable
- They will reject your application on behalf of a community if you can't provide sufficient references establishing that you actually represent the interests of that community
- They will reject your application if you haven't outlined to their satisfaction a plan for continuity/migration of control of the gTLD from your organization to some other organization in case of the bankruptcy/dissolution/etc of your organization (note: this is a separate thing from the technical considerations of registry fail-over et al, which are more something that most applicants would have a technical registry partner fill out on their behalf)
---
In all, the process actually seems quite thorough — but as with regular domain-name registration, it's a default-accept, not a default-deny, policy. The more arbitrary gTLDs that have been established so far all just-so-happen to be "innocent" of all of the disqualifiers.
Specifically, I think, given the criteria, that any multinational company could probably expect to be able to acquire its own name and trademarks as gTLDs without much fuss; and recognized leaders/stewards of any major religion (or other non-country-endemic sociocultural group) could likely get any jargon term specific to that religion/subculture as a gTLD. Those two cases together cover most of the "weirdness" in approved applications.
One assertion I might make after reviewing the evaluation criteria, is that very few of the criteria look at the gTLD string itself. Almost any gTLD string is a potentially valid registration. Almost all of the evaluation process is set up to establish whether you, the applicant, have a valid claim for stewardship over the given gTLD string.
Yearly fee: $25k
Technical backend with Verisign: $200k per year
Add maybe $100k of lawyer fees.
Would be kind of cool, most attacked domain on the web, probably
https://icannwiki.org/New_gTLD_Program:_Next_Round
[1] https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/en/resources/faqs#6