[NCSG-Discuss] Google likely opening key New gTLD strings

[David Cake]

On 10/03/2013, at 11:14 AM, McTim <dogwallah at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 7:05 PM, Kathy Kleiman <kathy at kathykleiman.com> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>> For those following the issue (all of us?), here's the latest in the Closed
>> Generic battles: Google likely will open key strings.  Hooray!
> 
> 
> so, they will open 4 out of 100?

	Only some minority of Googles strings were planned as being closed generics. Google have a lot of registrations in for open generics - eg .car, though they have some .brands.
	
	Note that some of googles other domain names are not fully closed, but do intend to have very restrictive registration policies - for example, they intend registration in .android to be limited to members of the Open Handset Alliance. 

> I understand this is seen as a climb-down by Google, but does it also
> mean the other 96 or 97 will be closed?

	They are all up on icannwiki and elsewhere, it is not hard to find out the status of any specific name. But no, the majority of googles apps are open, though a few (eg ,android) are only open in the  fairly narrow sense of having names available via registrars. 

> I had thought they could have made a very strong public interest
> argument for closing .blog at least, in that they would be giving
> domains away for free.

	They may have been intimidated by the GAC early warning, possibly? 

	Cheers
		David