Google Registry (also known as Charleston Road Registry, a Google-owned company that’s distanced from the tech giant as per ICANN requirements) has announced its latest top-level domain (TLD).
Registrations for the new .ing TLD have now opened, but early registrants can expect to drop a whole lot of cash to get early access to the new suffix.
Google will use partner companies, like GoDaddy, to get the deal signed, only act.ing as an intermediary itself.
.ing domains available now from Google
To mark the launch of these new domains, Google has partnered with a handful of companies to show how names can be registered in a creative way.
Canva has registered draw.ing and design.ing, while Adobe has added edit.ing and sign.ing to its list for Acrobat.
For all of November and some of December, Google has introduced an Early Access Period (EAP), which will let customers pay a one-off fee of more than $1 million for the privilege of getting first choice of the domain they want.
101domain has shared details of the pricing structure for the EAP fees, beginning with $1.1 million in week 1, dropping weekly to $340,000, $115,000, $35,000, and $11,999. From there, daily reductions will be made, dropping the fee to $3,599, $1,299, $399, $379, $169, and $149.
General availability – without the extortionate fee – begins on December 5, by which point some of the most popular domains are likely to have been sold.
Google earlier this year announced that it would be tying up its Google Domains business, selling it to SquareSpace, with most customers now transferred. More conventional TLDs under the new SquareSpace Domains business begin at $12 per year.