Google, Yahoo, Huawei and Deutsche Telekom are among the companies vying for a new batch of super-short UK domain names.
Single- and two-letter .co.uk web addresses were opened up to registrations late last year by Nominet, the UK domain registry body.
Google wants g.co.uk – it didn’t comment on what it would use it for. Deutsche Telekom, parent of T-Mobile, is bidding against Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer, and more than a dozen other companies for t.co.uk.
Several brands have already been granted their trademarks or trading names. Yahoo nabbed y.co.uk and Virgin has v.co.uk.
BP will get bp.co.uk, the Football Association fa.co.uk, British Airways ba.co.uk, Burger King bk.co.uk, and Yo! Sushi yo.co.uk. Air France, Hargreaves Landsdowne, Ernst & Young and General Electric have all reserved their initials under the scheme.
But many of the letters not covered by trademarks are facing a scramble by speculators, including domain resellers, web designers, affiliate marketers and investment firms.
In a world of proliferating URL shorteners and dwindling numbers of premium domains, these speculators are betting that they can pick up a valuable domain when it first goes on sale and sell it on for a profit. Good domain names can still fetch big bucks, with Salesforce.com paying $1.5m for data.com earlier this week.
The process for claiming these snappy domains began in December last year.
First there was the “registered rights sunrise” phase, where trademark holders that match a one- or two-letter domain could grab it. Following that, there was an “unregistered rights” phase, for companies with some claim to a domain but no registered trademark to back it up.
Now, however, anybody can apply – it’s the appropriately-named “landrush phase”, which runs until June 15. Domains with more than one applicant (and that’s all of the available single-letter domains, according to a quick check of the Nominet site) will go to auction. Proceeds go to the Nominet Trust, a charity investing in online safety, education and bridging the digital divide.
Any leftovers will be first-come-first-served from June 27 – although I suspect that there won’t be many.
UPDATE Oct 2, 2011: Google was outbid for g.co.uk, plus other results from the auction: Single letter domains fetch average of £39,000
