What price branding? Starting in 2012 you can get your own domain extension – for a mere $185k.

If managing your company name online is important to you, need to read “Web Addresses Enter New.Era” from the WSJ today.

The good news is that now companies can have greater control of their online identities by having their company (or city, product etc.) as their domain extension. Think, refreshing.coke or diet.coke. The ramifications are powerful. And daunting. It is already difficult (onerous for large companies) to manage and control domain name activity with the 20 current extensions and variations of brand names. And even for small or medium sized organizations, significant resources are expended to merely protect and defend a brand name.  Read: more expenses that may produce nothing. No revenue. No goodwill. Nothing. Just money spent to get ahead of opportunistic entities before they hijack your good name for cash flow.  Hopefully the $185k application fee and the “several-hundred page application” will prevent a lot of that. It’s not surprising that many companies were opposed to this change. What’s your strategy for this?