[mmahemoff]

You wouldn't take Google seriously? I'm sure they didn't fork out just for today, they will be using it for their products at some point.

In a few years, it will probably the standard domain for big corps. iphone.apple, macbook.apple, etc. It looks weird now (or an intranet address at best), but once people get used to it, it will be recognisable as a domain just as any.com is now.

Not to mention, an explosion of TLDs for reselling (.futbol .enterprise etc) means people will just equate . on billboards etc with a domain.

[BetaMechazawa]

The fact that a company needs their own gTLD is silly. Sites like google have a perfectly good domain. Why use iphone.apple if apple can already do iphone.apple.com or apple.com/iphone? At the end of the day the consumer will not start guessing what domain he/she has to use to get what they want. The average consumer uses a search engine and types in "apple iphone". They don't care about iphone.apple they just want to go to the product page.

[vacri]

Well, it's not about need. It's about a story that goes like this:

    ICANN: Hey, has anyone noticed that our wallets aren't
           very heavy?
    Google: We have a bucketload of money just laying around
           that will fill your wallets, and wouldn't mind
           our own gTLD. It'd be cute.
    ICANN: You had us at 'bucketload of money'

We needed more gTLDs anyway. So what if a few mega-companies get their own versions?

[ChikkaChiChi]

Because ICANN set this up, and companies have to protect their trademarks.

Google isn't going to abandon their perfectly good domains.

[josteink]

> Google isn't going to abandon their perfectly good domains.

Good thing icann just increased the available domain-space from "limited" to "unlimited" then. That sounds good for almost everyone, or at least icann.

[sukilot]

Basically, "" is now a TLD, and ICANN is the registrar, so it can extract the rents.