.waze
Is .waze a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.waze is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Google.
A closed brand space for the Waze navigation app: useful to its owner for official links, but not something others can buy or trade.
the Waze brand itself and its parent company, for official product, support, and campaign addresses; no outside buyer group
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet as .waze: a deliberately re-spelled common English word ('flicker'/'ways') turned into a coined consumer-app mark, applied for by the acquiring parent to put a single product's identity — not the corporation's — on the string.
Also a coined, meaningless-outside-the-product word owned by a far larger parent, where the string only works because years of consumer app usage made the invented syllable a household verb-like brand.
The nearest same-job parallel — a consumer navigation/mapping service brand applied for as its own identity — but it bets on claiming an ordinary dictionary word rather than defending a coined mark, so the trademark and recognition problem is inverted.
What a .waze domain is
.waze is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Brand. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .waze domain extension real yet?
.waze is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .waze domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .waze name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .waze was .flickr, delegated on 13 February 2016.
Is .waze a real TLD?
Not yet. .waze is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .waze is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Google · first recordedICANN
“CRRI2564-T17424 · Charleston Road Registry Inc. · primary”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The verified facts show one application, by Google via Charleston Road Registry Inc., filed as a brand type; a brand string is, by design, registered and used by its owner rather than sold to third parties, so there is no aftermarket and no outside primary-identity use. It is not in the 30-49 band because registrations at volume or on price do not occur in a closed brand space, and resale value is effectively nil. It is not in the 1-9 band because, by analogy with brand strings from the earlier round operated by the same registry (the parent company's own brand TLDs, flagged as analogy), the owner can gain genuine end-use utility: short, trustworthy official addresses for a widely used consumer app, which carry some anti-phishing and campaign value over the next 5 years. Within the band I sit low-to-mid, because the utility accrues to a single party and depends entirely on that party's rollout choices. Main market uncertainty: whether the owner moves Waze's primary consumer identity onto .waze addresses or keeps the string for a handful of redirects and short links, which by analogy with other brand TLDs has ranged from active use to near-dormancy.