Companies and individuals will soon be able to use domains like mycompany.au rather than mycompany.com.au in Australia. The release of these second level .au domain names starts 24 March 2022, and parties will need to be ready register interest in good time.
Other countries have had this capability for nearly a decade, the United Kingdom releasing second level domains in 2014.
This is both a marketing opportunity and a controversial move because different businesses could be competing for the same new domain name and could incur extra costs to protect brands. For example, multiple business may have similar domains with different extensions before the launch of .au direct. For example:
Wendy is the registrant of example.com.au
John is the registrant of example.net.au
Linda is the registrant of example.org.au
But they all want example.au!
Here is a link to help explain the allocation process.
The important take out is that you need to both assess the opportunities and risks of registering .au domain for your company, key product or for a creative marketing approach to clients.
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