McDonald's and Amazon make domain news

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I'm writing this newsletter from Seattle, where I migrate for a bit every summer to escape the Austin heat. This time I brought it with me as Seattle prepares for record-high temperatures near 100 degrees! That's not a big deal in Texas, but Seattle lacks air conditioning.

Speaking of hot (sorry, I couldn't resist), here are the five hottest stories on Domain Name Wire for July ranked by views. From hamburgers to X-Files, there was a lot going on:

1. McDonald's takes domain names off the menu - McDonald's exited the new top level domain program after deciding to relinquish its two domain names, .mcdonalds and .mcd.

2. Is Verisign about to change the expired domain drop catching game? - I discussed a patent that was just published as well as ICANN's forecast of a reduction in drop catching registrars. I wonder who told ICANN to be on the lookout for lots of these registrars to shut down.

3. David Duchovny wins DavidDuchovny.com domain name dispute - The Golden Globe-winning actor won a cybersquatting dispute against Alberta Hod Rods, which has lost lots of celebrity domain names in UDRP cases.

4. GoDaddy promotes domain investing on its homepage - Promoting domain investing on the home page of the world's largest domain registrar is a nice boost for awareness.

5. Amazon.com gets big win in domain battle, may yet get .Amazon domain - If the company can get .amazon it could be big for driving new TLD awareness.

Podcasts

Subscribe to the Domain Name Wire Podcast on your iPhone or Android device so you never miss an episode. Here are the episodes that aired in June. Listen to them now.

Episode #146 - I speak with BrandIT about the European domain market and corporate domain name management.

Episode #145 - Domain investor Steve Kaziyev explains how he's buying and selling domain names.

Episode #144 - Alan Dunn says why he doesn't think it's too late to get into domain investing.

Episode #143 - Kevin Ohashi of ReviewSignal explains how he uses sentiment analysis to rate web hosts.