.office

Status:	Proposed
Registry Provider:	Verisign
Type:	Brand TLD
More information:

.office is a Brand TLD being proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The applicant is Microsoft.

Application Details

The following is excerpted from the applicant's response to question #18:

"The mission of Microsoft Corporation is to transform the way people work, play and communicate throughout the world through the provision of software, services and hardware. Microsoft does business throughout the world, with offices in more than 100 countries and over 90,000 employees. Every day, billions of consumers and businesses work, play, and communicate using Microsoft software, services, and hardware.

Microsoft Office system products are designed to increase personal, team, and organization productivity through a range of programs, services, and software solutions. Hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses worldwide use Microsoft Office system products to meet a wide range of needs such as creating, editing, collaborating on, storing, and sharing spread sheets, calendars, budgets, invoices, presentations, diagrams, photos, videos, audio, and documents; communicating via email and instant messages; managing information and content; and performing desk top publishing.

The mission of the .office registry is to lay the ground work for providing consumers and businesses who interact with Microsoft through the .office gTLD with a more secure and authentic experience, to protect the Microsoft Office brand, and to promote the Microsoft Office system.

We are assessing the opportunities that a new gTLD has for the delivery of secure communications, products, and services.

Registration of an .office domain name will be restricted to Microsoft Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiaries.

All domains in the .office registry will be registered to Microsoft Corporation or one of its wholly owned subsidiaries. "

Name Collision Issues

In October 2013 ICANN released their final assessment and mitigation plan for the Name Collision issue that was facing the New gTLD program. On 18 November 2013, ICANN announced the applied-for strings that were eligible for an alternative path towards delegation that would allow applicants to proceed without waiting for further mitigation research and plans to be published. 25 strings, including .office, were not eligible for the alternative path, and will have to wait for more plans to be published before continuing towards delegation.