Bellevue startup Donuts has received approval from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to administer .游戏, an internationalized domain name that translates to “games” in Chinese characters. It marks the first domain name that Donuts plans to release over the next year, with the agreement signed at ICANN’s 47th public meeting in South Africa.
“The current Internet namespace, like .COM, is worn out and needs new and specific options, particularly for underserved or developing areas that can use native script IDNs to increase Internet participation,” said Donuts CEO and co-founder Paul Stahura in a statement. “Donuts applauds ICANN for moving forward toward delegation with this important contracting step.”
Donuts emerged almost from nowhere last June when it became the largest bidder for what are known as generic top-level domains (gTLDs). It bid for 307 different domain name extensions.
Its list of possible extensions includes .academy, .auction, .baby, .baseball, .bingo, .credit, .dentist, .gold, .golf, .pizza, .poker, .rugby, .spa and others.
The company all is well funded, having raised more than $100 million to date.
