I went to Japan to relax, but ICANN had other plans

The application count is the first hard number from the round. It sets the scale of what is coming. More TLDs means more choices for registrants, but also more contention and more defensive registrations.

The author's experience in Japan highlights a different pattern: companies there run multiple domains for separate functions, and language-specific booking sites. That is a reminder that domain strategy is not uniform. Some markets treat domains as functional tools rather than a single primary brand URL.

The difficulty telling official sites apart in Japan is a trust problem. If legitimate sites are hard to identify, impersonation becomes easier. For domain holders, this reinforces the value of clear, consistent domain use and the need for brand protection measures.

The planned coverage of community applications, geo domains, contention sets and replacement string strategies points to the areas where the new round will have practical effects. These are the mechanisms that decide who gets contested names and what alternatives exist.

What is still unknown is how the applications will fare through ICANN's evaluation process. The list is the starting point. Objections, auctions and withdrawals will change the final landscape.