The Telegraph is reporting that London and Partners – the agency responsible for promoting London to the wider world – it going to apply to purchase the .london domain name.
According to the article:
Applications for the licence to operate a new “top level web domain” for London must be submitted by April 2012. Consultations will however take up to 20 months from then. London will be joining a number of other cities who have expressed their interest in applying for their domain, including New York, Paris, Sydney, Rome and Berlin.
London & Partners works with the Mayor of London, and is currently identifying the potential benefits and business models as well as consulting with London boroughs on how it might be useful to them.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London is keen to see “a greater use of the digital world to deliver more effective public services for the city”. He is said to see a web domain “as a potential opportunity to build on London’s position as a global centre for digital innovation”. The city has recently made live information about all its buses available online, for instance.
Ownership of this big chunk of the internet will not come cheap – it costs $100,000 to apply for a Top Level Domain name like this.
Londontopia.london has a nice ring to it. Personally I think .ldn or .lon would be a better choice. .London just seems too long.