Application Comment Details

The Amazon rainforest has existed for 55 million years, and has been called the Amazon or something like it for nearly 500 years. It contains over half of the earth's remaining rainforest lands, and is under threat by societal forces which value short term profit over the long term health of the earth. To assign the amazon TLD to Amazon.com, Inc would be to similarly value short term profit over the long term health of the earth, in addition to ascribing more importance to a company than to several countries, indigenous peoples, languages, and cultures combined.

Amazon.com, Inc is approximately 25 years old, a sliver of time compared to the Amazon. This name collision exists because Amazon.com named itself after the rainforest/region. If they wanted to avoid such a conflict, they could have chosen or made up another name. Furthermore, the company has many other TLDs it can and has used, which work just as well. Given their dominance of several industries it does not seem like a lack of the .amazon TLD has impacted their success at all. The same is not the case for the countries and peoples of the Amazon basin who are currently facing political, environmental, and financial crises. What TLD should they use to refer to the Amazon? And how should they spread knowledge of that TLD given their comparative lack of money and influence on ICANN and the broader tech community?

I have never been so disappointed in an ICANN decision as in this one. I hope you reverse course.