Auctions for contested “short” .ie domain names started earlier today.
The private auctions are being handled by UK based company Divido who already do some auctions for .io and .ac.
It is expected that the auctions will take a couple of weeks to complete.
The auctions are open to applicants for “short” 1 and 2 letter (or number) .ie ccTLD domain names which were “contested” ie. there was more than one qualified applicant. Due to the .ie policies each application for a .ie domain name registration is manually vetted by the IEDR‘s staff.
Several high profile brands, including Facebook, registered short .ie domain names during the sunrise period. The current auctions are for contested domains from the “landrush” phase.
Up until now it was not possible to register single character .ie domain names or domain names consisting of two letters. Previously the only two letter .ie domain name was ul.ie which predates the formation of the IEDR and the current policies.
It’ll be interesting to see if any of the registrants of the short .ie domains actively use their domain names or simply use them as “pointers” or “redirects”. We (Blacknight) have started using bk.ie as a URL shortener 🙂
