Google has announced a Sunrise period to its .meet new gTLD, but when the Sunrise and Trademark Claims periods finish, Google will be the sole registrant of all domain names.
The new generic top-level domain was originally delegated in 2014 to Afilias who had intended have as its core target group online dating sites. Under its “mission and purpose” in its application, Afilias said:
“There is currently a proliferation of online dating and companionship services on the Internet. Research shows that there are over 1,500 Internet dating sites in the U.S. alone, creating confusing choices for consumers. Most consumers do not have the time, money, or desire to use the services of more than a few dating services. As a result of this fragmented industry, consumers have limited choices of people to select from when they seek their ideal date or the perfect companion.
“The purpose of .MEET is to create an Internet namespace which could be used by visionary entrepreneurs and⁄or the existing online dating and companionship matching providers to become the gathering place on the Internet for many of the more than 40 million online companionship seekers.”
Afilias had planned to “make the .MEET namespace the most popular, accessible, and innovative destination on the Internet where people seeking online dating and companionship services can learn about dating, companionship services and registrars that offer .MEET domain names.”
But as of 2015 .meet became part of Google and no doubt they plan to use it with their recently re-engineered videoconferencing service Google Meet, their competitor to Zoom, which originally launched back in 2017.
For now though, Google’s Sunrise period for .meet runs from 25 May to 24 June which will be followed by a Trademark Claims Period that commences on 25 June with no end date.
But Google isn’t going to make .meet domain names publicly available. A statement on the Google Registry site says:
“This domain is Spec 9/ROCC exempt, which means we will be the registrant for all domains on the TLD and it will not be made generally available. The RRA for the TLD is available upon request, but registrations on behalf of the registry will be processed through a small number of registrars with whom the relevant product teams at Google work.”
Google currently has 46 new gTLDs delegated with just over one million domain names, according to nTLDstats. The largest of these is .app with 700,132 domain name registrations followed by .dev (198,802), .page (121,473), .how (2,758) and .soy (1,456). These are the only of Google’s new gTLDs to have more than 1,000 registrations with another three having three-figure registrations including .みんな (.everyone) xn--q9jyb4c) next on 946, these being the only six to have entered General Availability. Most, if not all, of the remaining strings will remain solely for Google’s use. Google originally applied for 101 new gTLDs, which does not include .meet.