Internet authority ICANN has announced the immediate termination of .HOME, .CORP and .MAIL gTLDS. The move comes as a result of the overlap of these names within internal networks i.e public and private space can cause name collision and harm the gTLDs in the long haul.
According to ICANN, the string of .HOME, .CORP and .MAIL gTLDs will never be delegated as a part of the expansion for new TLDs. Citing the reason for the same, ICANN said that since these names are already existing in the public and private networks, setting them live in the DNS could cause issues. For e.g. if you have your home or business network is named as storage.home or build.corp respectively, it can clash with the domains of the same name.
Explaining this in detail, a spokesperson for ICANN said:
The introduction of any new domain name into the DNS at any level creates the potential for name collision [however] the New gTLD Program has brought renewed attention to this issue of queries for undelegated TLDs at the root level of the DNS because certain applied-for new TLD strings could be identical to name labels used in private networks.
According to ICANN, there were other strings of gTLDS that also faced the issues of name collisions but none were as complicated as the ones terminated. In closing, ICANN said that they will be refunding a total of USD 185,000 to the applicants of the .HOME, .MAIL and .CORP TLDs.