1&1 Mail & Media GmbH, whose parent company is United Internet AG, just withdrew its application to operate the new gTLD .Mail.
I think this is a very meaningful withdrawal because of the fact that as the applicant owns Mail.com and stands to be the biggest benfificaly of having the .Mail new gTLD and the most at risk for loss of business to a .Mail new gTLD.
.Mail for this particular application, would have be a either big business opportunity or a big defensive play and they simply withdrew their application.
Besides this company has a huge customer base and would be very well positioned to market a give a lot of exposure to new gTLD’s in general.
It should be pointed out that both the United States Postal Service and the Universal Postal Union, filed formal objections to all .mail applicants.
There are still 6 other applications for .mail including one’s filed by Google, Amazon and Donuts.
The application had a prioritization number of 254, meaning that there application would have come up for Initial Evaluation in the next two weeks through ICANN and by withdrawing now got a 70% refund rather than a 35% after IE was released.
This becomes the 44th new gTLD applications to be withdrawn and arguably the most important to date.
Here is some more information about the company:
1&1 Mail & Media GmbH (Mail&Media in the following)
With over 32 million customers Mail&Media covers nearly 50% of the German Webmail market. With its brands, Mail&Media is the largest free email provider in the German speaking countries of Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
Mail&Media under its brands WEB.DE, GMX and MAIL.COM, provides email solutions for home users, as well as small and mid-size enterprises.
Mail&Media Brands
WEB.DE
WEB.DE was launched in 1995 as the first commercial German Internet catalog. Today, with its Web services focusing on communication, information, entertainment and search and with 16.36 million users per month, WEB.DE has become one of the biggest Internet portals in Germany (AGOF internet facts 2011-10).
The WEB.DE portal offers over 40 different Internet information, entertainment and communication products including news, shopping, games as well as free and premium webmail. The portals provide a one-stop site offering all the relevant services our users need.
With over 15 million registered email customers, WEB.DE is the second largest email provider in Germany.
GMX
With over 15 years of expertise in Internet communication, the email pioneer GMX (global message exchange) is one of the most successful communication services in the German-speaking Internet today.…