Protecting your brand online could cost a fortune
Did you catch the news? ICANN appears ready to open the universe to any URL suffix anybody wants to buy. You may have already invested heavily in MyHospital.org, .com, .biz, .edu, etc., along with the various permutations of that (positive and negative), but get ready to take another run at it.
In simple terms, just as an example, the Mayo Clinic could procure MayoClinic.Mayo. Or Aurora Health Care could have AuroraHealthCare.Aurora. The choices ICANN appears ready to accept are limitless. Preference is expected to be given to the branded entity, but if somebody wants one of these new URLs with your hospital or system name in it, and you don’t buy it, odds are ICANN will sell it to whoever is willing to pay.
Here’s the rub: The costs are expected to be quite high. Early estimates start in the mid-five figures, and go up from there. The more well known the brand name, the higher the price is likely to be.
How this is all going to shake out is open to a lot of speculation. Will an entity procure one of these new URLs and dump their existing ones? I would doubt it. Even more fundamentally, your online audience is well trained already to look for sites via search engines, bookmarks, typing in the URL, etc. None of these typical paths should be affected by the ICANN decision, at least not anytime soon.
We don’t think this is cause for immediate alarm or action, but it is worth watching closely. We’ll keep you posted on how this evolves!
If this comes true — it will truly be “welcome to the wild wild west” and I can only imagine that it will cost organizations potentially thousands of dollars to protect their brands and reputaitons … what a mess this might become for every organization. We’ll have to keep a close eye on it.