It’s hard to blog on while over the ocean. Here’s some stuff I missed.
I just returned from an eleven day vacation in Australia (more on that later). It’s good to be back, especially after trying to blog from a time zone 15 hours from my usual.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s really hard to keep up with all the latest news while on the road. Especially when you’re on a 15 hour flight. Here are two particularly interesting news stories from the past couple days while I was up in the air:
Citi vs. City: Citigroup is suddenly arguing that “citi” isn’t confusing with “city”. The company filed a comment in the new top level domain process arguing that its name shouldn’t be in contention with applicants for .city.
As Kevin Murphy points out, this is the opposite of the argument the company has made before when filing UDRP cases, in which it argued that domain names including “city” were confusingly similar to its Citi marks.
A few observations:
1. Companies often make arguments to meet their immediate needs, only to have them backfire later.
2. One of the supposed benefits of .brand top level domains such as .citi is that consumers will know they are on a legitimate site when they see the top level domain. I think this is giving the consumer too much credit. If users didn’t realize they were on a non-Citi domain when they visited CityCard.com, how would they notice if they are on a .city domain instead of .citi?
3. That said, I think both .citi and .city should be granted as new TLDs.
Manwin vs. ICANN: a court has denied motions to dismiss Manwin’s case against ICANN and ICM Registry over .xxx. Let the games continue…
Acro says
Mike Bahlitzanakis and his City.com can tell both contenders to shove it.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Acro – think of the nice traffic Mike will get from .city and .citi…
JP says
You were close. Next time you must fly up to Bali. This place is crawling with Aussies anyway.