This week, ICANN said that it will terminate its contract for the nTLD, .THEGUARDIAN, leaving newspaper publisher Guardian News & Media out of the domain game for good.
.THEGUARDIAN happens to be the 14th new gTLD registry agreement to be terminated by ICANN, all of which were dot-brands.
ICANN informed The Guardian that it started termination proceedings from October 21st, as the company failed to complete its required pre-delegation testing and missed a number of deadlines. Reports say that .THEGUARDIAN was the only possible gTLD remaining of the five that Guardian originally applied for.
The Guardian signed its registry agreement with ICANN in April 2015, and failed to go live within a year. The Guardian also applied for .GUARDIAN, which it decided not to pursue as it claimed to face competition from the insurance company of the same name.
It has also been reported that applications for .GDN and .GUARDIANMEDIA were withdrawn before the completion of Initial Evaluation.