State Won't Pony Up to Buy the .vermont or .vt Domains — at Least for Now

FOR SALE: Cozy, two- and seven-letter top-level domains in quaint, left-leaning New England state. Great opportunities for global business promotion and marketing using well-respected brand. $185K OBO. Applications being accepted here by ICANN.

The state of Vermont says it has no plans to shell out tens of thousands in cash to own the Vermont name — or, more accurately, the .vermont or .vt names — at least for now. That's the word from Secretary Lawrence Miller at the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, about plans by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to start issuing new top-level domains (TLDs), including .vermont and .vt later this year.

ICANN, which acts as the internet’s global traffic cop, is the entity that issues the dot suffixes — .com, .org, .net, .biz, etc.—  we all use to access websites. Because of the internet's exponential growth, ICANN recognized several years ago that it was only a matter of time before it effectively ran out of usable addresses in the Domain Name System (DNS).

Hence ICANN’s decision last year to offer new, generic TLDs in 2012 in order to "foster diversity, encourage competition and enhance the utility of the DNS." Starting on January 12, ICANN began accepting applications from businesses, organizations, governments and other entities to buy their own unique plots of virtual real estate on the worldwide web, such as .coke, .exxonmobil, and .microsoft. ICANN's application process closes on April 12, after which, presumably, anyone with $185,000 in spare change can step up and apply for their own .whatever domain.