[weissadam]

To be totally honest, this looks more like an internal management problem at Google than it does like a real effort coming out of their actual Internet strategy.

First off, the application to ICANN states that the purpose of this is to "... provide Google with greater ability to create a custom portal for employees to manage products and services in development."

That doesn't even make much sense, and honestly sounds like a bunch of corporate gobbledegook written by somebody who reads CIO Magazine.

Second off, this Ben dude is actually the CIO. CIO as in, guy who is in charge of internal IT. Printers, telephones, desktops, laptops, HR systems, financial systems, webpage based paperwork. If there were letters coming out of people on the service side, that would be one thing, but this smells like something embarrassing that snuck out when nobody was looking...

[Kalium]

Apparently Google already internally resolves .dev to a host of internal services. They don't want those to conflict with external services. The best way to do this is to buy .dev, that way they can make sure this does not happen.