The applicant of honeywell brand domain, American conglomerate Honeywell (NYSE: HON) has decided it doesn’t want to run its own top level domain name anymore nor transition it to a third party registry.
The company informed (pdf) ICANN last month that it wishes to terminate its agreement to run .honeywell as a top level domain name. The company never used the domain; the only second level domain name it registered under .Honeywell was the obligatory nic.honeywell.
American conglomerate Honeywell (NYSE: HON) has decided to discontinue its top-level domain (TLD) name, .honeywell, and has opted not to transition it to a third-party registry. Honeywell informed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) last month, via an official letter, of its decision to terminate the agreement to operate .honeywell as a TLD.
Interestingly, the company never actively used the domain. The only second-level domain it registered under .honeywell was the mandatory nic.honeywell, which ICANN requires all operators of TLDs to maintain. Beyond this minimal usage, the domain name remained largely dormant throughout its time under Honeywell’s control.
Honeywell had only applied for the .honeywell domain, making it the sole TLD the company pursued. Other notable companies have similarly abandoned their TLDs. For example, brands such as McDonald’s (.mcdonalds, .mcd), HTC (.htc), Naspers (.naspers), PayU (.payu), and media companies in South Africa (.supersport, .mzansimagic, .mnet, .kyknet, .africamagic, .multichoice, .dstv, and .gotv) have also chosen to terminate their TLDs. These decisions indicate that many companies are rethinking the utility of owning and maintaining their own branded domain extensions.
Additionally, certain domains like .mail, .home, and .corp were never delegated by ICANN due to name collisions—situations where the domains could cause technical issues on private networks. Instead of proceeding, ICANN refunded the applicants for these domains.
In another recent development, the geographic TLD for Doha, the capital of Qatar, was also dropped. These actions reflect a broader trend where companies and entities are reevaluating the value and necessity of managing custom top-level domains, leading many to abandon them entirely.