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takyon writes:

Google has sold the .car generic top-level domain to Cars Registry Limited, a joint partnership by domain industry companies XYZ and Uniregistry. In fact, Google appears to have walked away from many of the TLDs it once coveted:

With its deep pockets, many feared that Google was going to swamp the domain name industry with free names and so undercut and undermine everyone but established names.

However it is clear that last year the company decided to walk away from the names with "interesting and creative potential," as well as most of those that will "improve user experience," concentrating instead of its brand names and trademarks.

It has walked away from 40 domains, including several that would appear to be directly relevant to Google's business, including '.talk', '.cloud', '.store' and '.movie'.

And it struck deals with other large companies - in particular Amazon - to trade names of value that both had applied for. For example, in return for '.book' and '.talk', Google received '.dev' and '.drive' from Amazon.

It was the only applicant for 26 generic words like '.foo' and '.meme' and so has retained them - although if anyone else wants them, it is probably worth giving the company a call.

In fact, out of the 101 names it applied for, the only ones outside of its brands that Google has fought have been: map, app, search and phd. It paid the largest amount for any new internet extension - $25m - for dot-app. "Map" and "search" are pretty obviously valuable to Google. As for '.phd'? Who knows.