London has lodged its interest in buying the .London domain name. The Mayor's official marketing and promotions agency, London and Partners, has taken the first step to owning a 10 year ICANN licence to operate the generic top level domain (gTLD).

Kulveer Ranger, Digital Advisor to the Mayor said: “Ownership of the dot London domain could offer a tremendous opportunity to reinforce London’s position as a global centre for digital innovation, generate revenue and bring about new employment opportunities. There is great potential for engaging with Londoners and the Mayor is interested to understand better what people think this opportunity would mean to them, as well as the marketing opportunities and the business benefit for the capital as a whole.”

New York, Paris, Sydney, Rome and Berlin have also lodged interest in owning their respective domains.

As reported by Huffington Post in in July, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, approved the creation of generic top-level domain names.

In addition to the '.com' domain registered to over 94 million websites, a raft of new domains has opened up the way websites are named.

We already have 21 generic domains like .net and .org and 250 country-specific domains like .co.uk. Now we will have .xxx, and domains related to high profile names, brands and locations like London.

No average Joe can register a gTLD, brands or cities must be proven well-established private or public organisations, and be able to demonstrate their authenticity to ICANN at a cost of $185,000. Bidding is not entered into, and the domain goes to the most worthy applicant.

Bidding is open for the .xxx domain. Stuart Lawley, who runs ICM Registry, the company selling .xxx, said in The Independent he created the domain to "promote a responsible approach to adult content on the Internet and offer clear signposts to its locations online".

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