The International Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) received 1930 applications (gTLD) for new internet addresses, with Amazon and Google applying for dozens of domains including .shop, .cloud, .buy and .book.
The competition for the new internet real estate including .app, .blog and .web began on Wednesday from applicants hoping to use them as alternatives to their existing .com top-level domains.
Each application for a new name costs $185,000.
According to data released by ICANN, the organization received received 1930 gTLD applications during its 2012 application window. Of those, 84 were
designated as community-based by the applicant.
ICANN received applications for 231 domain names. The most popular were .app with 13 bids, .home with 11, .inc with 12 , .art with 10 and .blog with 9.
Apple has applied for only ".apple" while Google, Amazon and Microsoft have gone after multiple product names. Among many names, Amazon is going after ".book," ".circle," ".news," ".author" and the ".fire" ending. Microsoft is seeking to acquire its search engine Web address suffix with ".bing" and its e-mail service ".hotmail" along with other products.
Just 17 applications were received from Africa, 303 from Asia Pacific regions, 675 from Europe, 24 from Latin America and 911 from North America.
ICANN will be assessing the applications with contested domains going to auction where more than one party has a legitimate claim. The first new domains are likely to come online in the first half of 2013.