Dear folks, this may or may not pertain to any current thread of 
"dialogue", but is nonetheless quite interesting, and perhaps revealing 
of the nature of the gTLD business.

Journalist Dominique Lacroix (Le Monde) has put together some statistics 
regarding the economic interests behind the gTLD craze unleashed by ICANN:

- 393 US applications are by US companies' branches based in European 
tax heavens (including 76 bids by Amazon Luxemburg);

- the total of gTLD applications by US companies' branches based in tax 
heavens is 891; just 390 applications are formally from US-based 
companies' headquarters;

- in summary, 47% of all gTLD applications are operations by US 
companies' branches based in tax heavens;

- of the total 1930 bids, 1455 (75,4%) will be run by one of seven US 
backend operators.

fraternal regards

--c.a.