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.