In 2008, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers) announced new top level domain expansions leading to predictions that alot of top brands and companies would spend more to prevent "cybersquatters" or competitors from owning TLDs associated with their brands/names. But nowadays, companies like Google and Amazon are taking TLDs purchasese to a whole new level other than trademark or brand protection

Mike Masnick at techdirt has even pointed out that "a bunch of these new gTLDs (generic top level domains) were not being applied for to set up a registry where anyone could obtain those kinds of domains, but rather to lock them up for one company's use." He also say that "while Amazon and Google are the most prominent players here, lots of other companies have jumped in as well. Hasbro wants .transformers. Johnson and Johnson wants baby."

The current debate is still going on, on the issue of generic TLDs where ICANN is evaluating thousands of applications for generic terms. 

“Clearly, companies want to own and control generic words as domains so that they can offer their services. But with that comes the possibility of blocking competitors who want to attach their brand to a term. For example, Ford might want to buy ford.truck but be blocked from doing so by the owner of .truck,” notes Michelle Quinn at Politico.

ICANN has been critized by many in the industry as they believe ICANN is creating new TLDs for the purpose of generating more money. Some say the new TLDs are not even necessary or is not based on the actual needs of the users. Worse than this, there are also various allegations where many of the ICANN board members had conflicting interests as many of them are connected to the registrars, thus benefiting from any new TLD expansions.

Now take a look at the chart below wallstcheatsheet.com where it shows the stock movement of Google and Amazon's TLD purchases over the past year.

(Image credits: http://wallstcheatsheet.com)