think about them like really expensive .com's and this will be easier to swallow. you can't get google.com or sex.com because they are taken - but you can get any other .com that is available. or you can get on somebody elses domain for free like .blogspot.com .wordpress.com .tumblr.com etc.
there are a lot of reasons i don't like that ICANN is doing this but fear that these companies are going to employ abusive monopolistic tactics is not one of them. and i think ICANN is likely to just ignore such complaints, because they don't make any sense. this is the opposite of a monopoly and these companies would be dumb not to share the extensions.
edit: his comment was edited after I typed mine and I'm too lazy to change it back and forth-
for $1 million plus in costs. You are confusing the extension with a domain name. The point is not to have ONE company own and control an extension (like .com) and all the domains in it. ICAAN should control them and then allow people and corps to register domains within that extension.
"The point is not to have ONE company own and control an extension (like .com) and all the domains in it."
This has already happened. Afilias controls .info. Public Interest Registry controls .org. (Afilias actually runs the backend operations of .org for Public Interest Registry.)
I operate a registrar and I pay money to both of them. When we call support (rare) the same people take the calls for both TLD's.
I was around when this happened and .info was being floated and passed on an opportunity to invest in it.
Wrong, they do not control anything, they administer it. I can register any .com that is free and Verisign cannot stop me.
Google can refuse to allow anyone else from having televisions.shop or whatever.shop
That's a theoretical problem that wont matter in practice. Google only has two practical options: they can make .shop completely open and operate it just like .co or .io, or they can lock it down and use it only for themselves, in which case it will essentially just be a vanity domain, not an extension.
If they choose the latter, just use any one of the hundreds of other extensions that will be available.
I hate that ICANN is doing this - but not because of some theoretical power it technically gives Google.
I understand what you're saying, but not sure it will be that benign in practice.
That is, given that the domain format requires a minimum of two parts (the TLD and one other), ownership of entire swaths of possibilities/permutations can be locked down via complete ownership of one TLD.
there are a lot of reasons i don't like that ICANN is doing this but fear that these companies are going to employ abusive monopolistic tactics is not one of them. and i think ICANN is likely to just ignore such complaints, because they don't make any sense. this is the opposite of a monopoly and these companies would be dumb not to share the extensions.